Christmas Day 2010

Christmas in prison is always an interesting experience. This is my third Christmas behind bars. I deal better with it than I imagined that very first year.



Up early – 4:00 am. I did yoga and read the Bible. I’ve started a “tradition” of sorts on Christmas. I read Jeremiah 29 (“For I know the plans I have for you.”) and 1 John 5 (“God is love”). I worked on a short story and waited for breakfast.


After breakfast Big S and I went outside to workout. I ran my sprints on the frozen track humming Christmas carols to myself. It began to flurry. We were walking and I told Big S about my first married Christmas. She and I were both in school. We didn’t have much and were living in a one bedroom apartment. We had a little tree and just a few ornaments. We strung the tree with popcorn. I loved that tree. I loved that woman.


Besides the occasional guy shouting out “Merry F---in Christmas”, most guys just chilled out. E’s aunt and uncle came for a visit so he missed our huge Christmas lunch which was delicious. Huge slabs of roast turkey and pork ham, mashed potatoes, greens, dressing, gravy, cranberry sauce, rolls, cake and pie.


The COs were all in a pleasant mood. Many wished guys “Merry Christmas”. Big S called home and spoke to his little girl. She’s eight and excitedly told him all about her gifts. Only two more Christmases and he’ll be heading home.


I thought about my ex - it’s so tough to call her that – and my sons. I wondered how they were doing. Was their Christmas good? I wondered if they thought about me, about how our family was before my arrest. They were going to a friend’s home for Christmas dinner. We always did that. The three couples doing Thanksgiving, Christmas, July 4th together. Our kids all together. Now, the husbands – my two closest friends – visit me and urge me not to give up. Their wives, my ex’s best friends – listen to her talk of her difficulties and loneliness, and sadness. I wonder: Will anyone mention me? Will my friends dare to say “he still loves you”?


I received a copy of a minister’s recent sermon about the joy of Christmas. Ironically, it was a message I discovered on my own two years ago.


Christmas, he concluded, was about the deep seeded joy you feel knowing God loves you. It’s real love, not based on some conditions such as “I’ll love you if . . . .” It’s just God saying “I love you because you are mine.” It is a joy that broke through the dark and fear as shepherds sat on a cold hillside 2000 years ago.


And it is a joy that pierced the walls of a jail cell as a 49 year-old former lawyer contemplated sentencing, prison and divorce.


Happiness – that concept we all seem to strive for – is fleeting. It’s that feeling you get when you think you have everything. Happiness never lasts.


Joy does. Joy survives arrests and imprisonment. Joy survives divorce. Joy endures.


Big S and I were drinking coffee a little while ago. We both agreed today was OK. We’d both rather be somewhere else, but we both have so much to be thankful for.


It’s the joy I feel that keeps me going, keeps me believing things will change. Someone once said you should “be joyful, even though you considered all the facts.”


Christmas is about God’s gift of joy. It doesn’t deny the sorrow and loneliness I feel, but it sustains me through it. There will be a day when I’m free; there may be a day when I’m reconciled to those I love. There will always be the Joy of Christmas.