“The next morning, I ran down to Lucia King to see how the decorations looked in daylight. The kids were altogether amazed and couldn’t understand it…” World War II soldier Stephen Dick, December 1944

Christmas is a special time at Dr Graham’s Homes. Term ends with carols in the Katherine Graham Memorial Chapel and the hotly-anticipated Kindergarten Christmas Party (you can catch a glimpse of last year’s event in this video on the school’s YouTube channel).

But the festive programme isn’t just a modern innovation. As this heartwarming story from an 80-year-old letter reveals, DGH has always gone the extra mile to make Christmas special for our sponsored children. The letter was written by Stephen Dick (pictured right), a visitor to the Homes in 1944; it was kindly shared with us last year by his grandchildren.

The soldier who came to tea

Stephen was a young Scottish soldier who heard about the Homes while he was serving in Burma (now Myanmar) during World War II. Fascinated by the notion of a “home-from-home” for vulnerable children in the Himalayas, he asked the headmaster if he could visit the school during his next period of leave. Arriving in Kalimpong a few weeks later, he would spend most of December 1944 on campus, meeting the staff and helping the cottage house parents as they cared for the orphans over the winter holiday.

The orphans in the nursery

One of Stephen’s most memorable encounters was with the orphans at the Lucia King nursery. “I shall not forget my first visit to Lucia King cottage,” he recalls in the letter, written to his parents in the UK. “I was somewhat embarrassed at the beginning by having about 15 children calling me daddy. Poor kids, they don’t know what it is to have a daddy. However, [Nursery Head] Miss Peglar tactfully intervened and told them they were to call me ‘uncle’. So, from then on, uncle I was. I was asked to play nursery rhymes and Christmas carols for the children during tea.”

A dangerous Christmas Eve mission

Shortly before Stephen left DGH, Miss Peglar asked a favour of him. The nursery team wanted to surprise the orphans by covering the classrooms in Christmas decorations overnight – could he come and help? “Sure, we could,” he smiled. But the mission turned out to be more challenging than he had anticipated. “All she could offer was three tables and an old pair of rickety stepladders,” he writes. “It was I who did all the climbing as, unfortunately, I was the tallest. The first part wasn’t so bad; I had three tables on top of each other and had to fix four chains up with a bell right at the centre. The four corners were worse as I had to use the rickety stepladders. Three of the corners I had something to hold on to but the fourth there was just a bare wall. You know how you start to unconsciously lean forward when you descend? Well, I did, toppled over, kicked [RAF serviceman Jimmy] Burton on the nose and landed on the floor…” Happily, nobody was hurt.

The triumph of Father Christmas

By the time the clocks struck midnight, the Lucia King decorations were complete. Stephen and the team went off for some well-deserved rest. But he was soon up again and back at the nursery, anxious to see the children’s faces before his military transport left Kalimpong for the last time. “The next morning about 9am, before I left at 10:30am, I ran down to Lucia King to see how the decorations looked in daylight,” he writes. “The kids were altogether amazed and couldn’t understand it! Bare rooms the night before… and all this in the morning.” How had the decorations appeared there, the children wanted to know? The nurses had an answer ready for them. “Miss Peglar told them that two of Father Christmas’s friends had come,” Stephen laughs. “She didn’t say we came on reindeer, that I know of anyway, but personally I’m glad I did not come on one…”

Read more of the letter

You can learn more about Stephen’s adventures at Dr Graham’s Homes in the Stories section of our website. It’s a fascinating glimpse into what life was like at DGH in the 1940s.

Christmas at the Homes today

While most boarding pupils go home for the Winter Vacation, not every child has a family to go home to. Some of our sponsored children are legally determined as orphans. This means they’ll stay on at the Homes for Christmas, under the care of their cottage "Uncles and Aunties". Your donations and sponsorships help us to give these wonderful children the love and care every child deserves at Christmas. If you’d like to lend your support this year, please get in touch – or visit the Donate page.