This month's title borrows from an editorial that appeared in the Sept. 21, 1897 edition of The New York Sun. Its genesis? The pen of an inquisitive 8-year-old girl whose schoolmates had declared that Santa was an elaborate fabrication. (We've all faced the same crushing revelation, right?)

At the time, The Sun was a prominent New York City newspaper, and when the girl approached her father, he famously said that, "If you see it in The Sun, it is so." Her inquiry eventually wound up in the hands of Francis Pharcellus Church, an editor at the paper. One might imagine that, through the eyes of a child, the newsman's last name only gave further credence to his soft, thoughtful words. Church took pleasure in addressing the question's underlying philosophical issues and how the young naysayers were obviously "affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age." He eloquently said, "There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence" and that man—in intellect and being—is merely "an ant" or a speck in a vast universe.

Though I wouldn't consider myself sentimental, I would like to believe that, fundamentally, Church was right in delicately asserting that this celebrated holiday represents a state of mind, and that the kid in our hearts endures and dreams and still believes in the common decency and good will of others. Of course, Church never came across any of the scammers in this year's "Insurance Fraud Hall of Shame." Their heinous acts could leave even the eternal optimists among us doubting humanity. After all, we talk about how so many policyholders unknowingly misrepresent their risks. For the transgressions of this crop of criminals, insurers paid out a lot of money unnecessarily. Meanwhile, victims paid dearly, and with their lives in select cases.