Our View: Yes, Santa there is a Virginia

At the beginning of the 20th Century the same Victorians who gave Christmas its sheen told children they were better seen and not heard.

A century later, as our children laugh and squeal while opening their presents, it is important to remember that they one day will be in our place.

Today's children will be tomorrow's parents. Little Johnny may be playing with fire trucks today, but he will be the one stuck with putting out the fires of tomorrow.

Those adults at the turn of the century had no idea what their children would face in the next decade, much less 50 years.

What our children have in the way of technology 20 years from now will be as foreign to us as the airplane or the automobile was to those Victorian parents.

Trips to the moon and Mars were flights of fancy then. Now we've flown to both places and our ingenuity has gone beyond our solar system and into the void.

We can't know what to tell our children about the future, but we can teach them how to learn. They face a world where knowledge will be power. The details on how to tap into that knowledge will come to them if they know where to look.

On this eve of a new millennium, it is critical that we remember that how we deal with our children are the basis of our future and the future of the human race.