The Christmas When a Town Gave a Boy His Name
Davenport, Iowa — Christmas Day, 1908
The boy had no name.
He arrived at the Iowa Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home in 1902, no more than four years old, discovered wandering the railroad yards on a cold morning. Pinned to his coat was a small, worn tag. It held just one line, written in a hurried hand:
Please take care of my boy.
No one ever came back for him.
With no records and no answers, the matron wrote Baby Doe in the register. It was not meant to be cruel—only practical. And so the years passed. By 1908, the nameless child was ten years old, small for his age, quiet, observant. He had a habit the other children noticed: he always watched the front gate. Every footstep made him look up, as if someone might still appear and call him home.
Christmas was the one day each year when the whole town came to the orphanage. Davenport’s families brought secondhand toys, baked goods, and warm scarves. Santa Claus arrived with a white beard that slipped when he laughed. And every year, there was a special tradition: one symbolic gift was auctioned off to raise money for the home.
That Christmas, someone had an unusual idea.
The auction prize, announced with nervous laughter, was the right to name the boy who had never had one.
At first, people chuckled. Surely it was a joke. Then a farmer raised his hand and offered five dollars. The mayor followed with ten. A banker called out twenty-five. The laughter faded, replaced by a growing seriousness that filled the room.
More people crowded into the parlor. Voices rose. Bids climbed higher and higher. The boy sat on the bottom stair, clutching a ragged stuffed rabbit he had owned for as long as he could remember. His eyes were wide, his feet tucked beneath him, as if afraid the moment might vanish if he moved.
When the bidding reached one hundred dollars—an astonishing sum in 1908—the room fell quiet. Then an elderly woman stood slowly from her chair.
It was Mrs. Eleanor Whitcomb, the wealthiest widow in Scott County.
In a thin but steady voice, she said, “I will give one thousand dollars in cash, right now—if you let the children choose the name.”
Silence swept the room. A thousand dollars was more than many men earned in a year. The matron covered her mouth and began to cry.
The children were gathered into a circle around the boy. They whispered for ten long minutes, heads bent together, serious as adults. At last, fourteen-year-old Maggie O’Leary stepped forward.
“His name,” she said clearly, “is going to be Nicholas Hope Christmas.”
She explained simply: “Because he belongs to Christmas, because he never gave up hope, and because Saint Nicholas is the one who finds lost children.”
Mrs. Whitcomb counted out ten crisp hundred-dollar bills and placed them into the matron’s trembling hands. Then she crossed the room, knelt as best her old knees would allow, and looked the boy in the eyes.
“Merry Christmas, Nicholas Hope Christmas,” she said gently.
“You have a name now—and it belongs to every one of us.”
That night, for the first time in six years, Nicholas slept without waiting for the front gate to open.
He lived to be eighty-seven years old. He became a railroad engineer, married, and raised five children of his own. And every Christmas morning, just as dawn broke, he stood on his porch and rang a large brass bell so loudly the entire block could hear it.
When neighbors asked why, he always gave the same answer:
“Because once, a whole town stopped everything on Christmas Day to give an orphan boy what the world had forgotten to give him—
a name, and a promise that he belonged to somebody.”
