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Leadership from a different perspective – Top Five

Naked Leader Week – 227 (w/c Monday 1 October 2007)

Leadership from a different perspective – Top Five

Over its four plus years, NL Week has attracted much response and feedback – and I receive many e-mails from people asking which ones have received the most.

This would be slightly unfair, as it is now read and responded to by many more people than in its early months, so taking this into account, we have analysed which newsletter received most feedback, for each year – starting with 2003, and ending with 2007 (so far).

Two weeks ago : From 2003

The speech that rekindled loyalty and arguably won the US Civil War… (as Link)

Last week : From 2004

Possum (As Link)

2005 – Sent on Monday 19th December – a Christmas, heartwarming special

(246 responses – 245 positive, 1 less so)

Leadership from a different perspective – Christmas

 Sometimes a piece of literature moves you so much, and so deeply, that words cannot describe the impact. I came across this in April 2005, and immediately knew I had my Christmas Naked Leader Week. It will also be in The Naked Leader Adventure.

Please, share this with every “grown up” that you know. I hope it brings the same tears of joy, hope and belief to your, and their, eyes and heart, as it did to mine.

I wish you love, happiness and peace this Christmas, and always.

David

X

Editorial printed in the New York Sun in 1897.

 We take pleasure in answering thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of The Sun:

Dear Editor—

 I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, “If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?

 Virginia O’Hanlon

 The reply…

 Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the scepticism of a sceptical age. They do not believe except they see.

 Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The external light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

 Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

 You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart.

 Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else more real and abiding.

 Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

 

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