‘How will Santa find me?’

The “Will Santa Find Me” Foundation is currently based out of Connecticut, and works closely with the Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital. WSFM takes pride in helping to grant the exact gift wishes of many children and families.

The foundation granted its first wish in 1988, when founder, Remi, and her family, helped two young brothers living at a domestic violence shelter on Christmas Eve. The boys were afraid Santa would not find them since they weren’t home for the holidays.

Remi and her family kept the “miracle” of Santa alive by buying the boys each a red tricycle. The next morning the boys woke up to find their exact wish. They were overjoyed and filled with tears; but it wasn’t the tricycles, it was the fact that Santa did not forget them. From that moment forward, The “Will Santa Find Me?” Foundation hasn’t stopped giving.

For years, one of Mom’s Christmas traditions was to decorate the tree with ornaments that each had a photo of one of the family faces. You always looked for your own ornament. Where were you hiding among the branches?

William Sloane Coffin wrote: "Of God's love we can say two things: it is poured out universally for everyone from the Pope to the loneliest wino on the planet; and secondly, God's love doesn't seek value, it creates value. It is not because we have value that we are loved, but because we are loved that we have value. Our value is a gift, not an achievement. Because our value is a gift, we don't have to prove ourselves, only to express ourselves."

The story of Zacchaeus in a nutshell: A "sinner" in the eyes of all save One who sees a potential "Son of Abraham" and who, loving him as such, makes it possible. Loved into a person of value, Zacchaeus no longer needs to prove himself, but is free to express himself, which he does gratefully and generously.

We are to see ourselves as Zacchaeus, as those whom Christ finds among the boughs of the tree, knowing everything there is to know about us, calling us by name, and inviting himself into our hearts and lives. When we hear Jesus say, "the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost," we are to understand he means us.

Frederick Buechner, in The Hungering Dark, tells of being in Rome on Christmas Eve and attending St. Peter’s Basilica to see Pope Pius XII celebrate mass. Thousands of pilgrims from all over Europe arrived hours ahead of the time to find a good place from which to watch. Everyone wanted to be near the ropedoff aisle down which he would come.

After several hours waiting, a hush fell over crowd. The Swiss Guard entered carrying the golden throne on their shoulders. The crowd pressed in and began to cheer.

“What I remember most clearly, of course is the Pope himself. In all that renaissance of splendor, the Pope wore the plainest white. I can still see his face as he was carried in front me on his throne—that lean, ascetic face, gray-skinned, with the high-bridged beak of a nose, his glasses glittering in the candlelight. And as he passed by me he was leaning slightly forward and peering into the crowd with extraordinary intensity.

“Through the thick lenses of his glasses his eyes were larger than life, and he peered into my face and into all the faces around me and behind me with look so keen and so charged that I could not escape the feeling that he must be looking for someone, some one in particular!”

And so Jesus passes by, peering in the tree for that special one—searching the boughs for the sinner—looking in the limbs for the one who is, with all their heart, looking for him.