INSPIRATION / FLAGLER COUNTY
Nadine King
Let the parent
give the present.
Christmas Come True helps make the celebration possible. The family gets to make it their own.
By Rob Urban
At Christmas Come True, parents are encouraged to collect their family’s gifts without bringing the children. The presents are wrapped and labeled, ready for the parents to give at home.
That detail tells you a great deal about Nadine King’s work. The founder of the Flagler County nonprofit has built a program around the family’s experience of giving and receiving. A donor helps make Christmas possible; the parent still gets to be the person who places the gift in a child’s hands.
King founded Christmas Come True in 2009. Families are interviewed individually about needs and children’s wishes, with clothing, gifts, and a holiday meal assembled around that information. The approach asks volunteers to pay attention to a particular family rather than assume that any available present will do.
For an organization with a seasonal name, it has also become remarkably interested in the rest of the year. Beds, household goods, birthdays, and emergency needs have all become part of the work. Once you have met a family, the end of December does not make its circumstances disappear.
A PRACTICED KIND OF HOSPITALITY
The idea came
with her
from Virginia.
King had experience bringing people together long before the Flagler organization began. A 2010 account in FlaglerLive described her earlier years owning and managing restaurants in Virginia. During the 1980s, a conversation over dinner led her to organize a Christmas charity ball. She repeated it in subsequent years.
Later, after she and her husband made Palm Coast their permanent home, she revived the idea locally. Fundraisers included a ball, golf, and auctions. The first year’s effort helped 54 families, including 158 children, according to that contemporary report.
Those beginnings have the texture of hospitality: bring people together, give them a reason to enjoy the gathering, and direct the proceeds toward someone who needs them. Organizing an event can look festive from the guest’s side and decidedly less festive from the side responsible for making everything arrive on time. King had already spent years working where service depends on that second view.
It is a useful part of her background to remember. The local nonprofit did not emerge from an abstract idea of generosity. It drew on experience with people, events, and the work required to make an occasion happen.
A present for
this particular child.
In News 13’s 2016 reporting, King described long shopping days and explained that she approached purchases as she would for her own grandchildren. That year, the organization was also helping families affected by Hurricane Matthew.
The personal attention asks something of the people doing the shopping. Buying clothing involves size and need. Choosing a gift involves noticing what a particular child enjoys. Both require information, organization, and enough care to keep one family’s details from blurring into another’s.
I like that the effort protects some ordinary pleasures. Children get excited about a present. Parents enjoy knowing they chose something their child will like. Financial hardship can crowd out those experiences along with the necessities. A thoughtful program can return a little space for them.
There is also something respectful about moving the main celebration back into the family’s home. The important moment can belong to the people living it. It does not need an audience to count.
That is the part I admire most. The help supports a relationship that was already there. A parent still knows which color a child loves, which toy they have been talking about, and how they like to celebrate. Money can become scarce while that knowledge remains abundant. King’s program gives the parent’s knowledge somewhere to go.
THE BIRTHDAYS BETWEEN CHRISTMASES
Someone remembered
the baking pan.
The organization’s Birthday Room carries that approach into another part of the calendar. Parents can choose donated gifts and other items for a child’s birthday without charge. The program is also introducing cake kits containing mix, frosting, a pan, applesauce, and a gift card for eggs.
The pan is my favorite detail. A box of cake mix assumes access to everything else needed to turn it into a cake. Including the equipment and additional ingredients shows that someone thought through the task from the family’s side of the kitchen counter.
A birthday is a small event in an organization’s annual schedule and a large event in a child’s year. Helping a parent prepare one recognizes that scale. The child does not experience it as a minor line in a budget. It is their day.
What makes
a home
livable.
The same practical attention appears in the organization’s expansion beyond holidays. Since 2012, its assistance has included beds, bedding, furniture, and other household needs, with emergency help depending on available funding. These are the objects and expenses that make a place livable after someone has obtained a roof.
Flagler housing leader Devrie Paradowski works on another part of that larger picture. A home and the ability to live in it comfortably involve several kinds of support. King’s work often meets families at the household level, where a missing bed or an unaffordable celebration is a specific problem someone can help solve.
The next useful life
of a piece of furniture.
Begin Again Home Goods operates in Bunnell as an extension of Christmas Come True. Donated goods can be sold to support the organization, while suitable items also help families who are starting over. The store gives a piece of furniture another useful life and gives the nonprofit a way to sustain work beyond a single annual campaign.
That is an appealing local exchange. One household has a serviceable item it no longer needs. Another person wants to buy it, or a family needs it directly. The organization does the sorting and connecting. The goods remain useful, and their value helps circulate through the community.
King’s broader interest in skills and opportunity also appears in Innovative Community Resource Solutions, which describes a vision for expanded space, equipment, training, and small-business activity. Its public plans include resources for making and selling goods. The larger facilities remain a development ambition, with fundraising and partnerships still part of the work ahead.
People
keep coming
back.
Christmas Come True’s September 2026 golf-event announcement marked ten years of partnership with the DiBitetto family of Mezzaluna Pizzeria through its annual golf fundraiser. That sort of repeat relationship gives a small organization continuity. People return, bring others, and develop familiarity with the work their participation supports.
King also appeared among the recipients recognized in Professional Women of Flagler County’s December 2025 grant awards. The list placed nonprofit leaders alongside local business owners. It offered a glimpse of the overlapping networks that make a county’s charitable work possible.
Her work takes familiar community resources, including shops, restaurants, events, volunteers, and goods someone is ready to pass along, and arranges them around particular families.
The best expression of it remains the quiet pickup before Christmas. A parent leaves with the gifts prepared. Later, at home, a child opens them. The parent gets to enjoy being the giver.
About Nadine King and Christmas Come True
Who founded Christmas Come True?
Nadine King founded Christmas Come True in 2009 to help families in Flagler County, Florida.
What is the Birthday Room?
The Birthday Room lets parents choose donated items for their children’s birthdays without charge. Its cake kits include mix, frosting, applesauce, a baking pan and a gift card for eggs.
Does Christmas Come True help beyond the holidays?
Yes. Its year-round work includes household goods and emergency assistance when funding is available. Begin Again Home Goods supports the organization through donated items and store revenue.
Sources: Christmas Come True’s program descriptions and September 2026 golf-event announcement; ICRS’s public development plans; FlaglerLive’s 2010 account of the organization’s beginnings; News 13’s December 2016 reporting; and the Palm Coast Observer’s December 2025 grant coverage. Reflections on hospitality, attention and the pleasure of giving are Rob Urban’s.
For more of my writing and approach to consulting, meet Rob.