Omar Bandar

Omar Bandar has few recollections of how he spent Christmas behind bars when he was 19 years old.

"A convenient self-defense," he says with a laugh.

At the time, Bandar was one of eight men stuck in a cell meant for six at Billerica House of Corrections in Massachusetts, where he was serving 11 lonely months for possession of an unlicensed firearm.

And while he's certain that Dec. 25 was just as bleak as every other day at Billerica, a single covert act of generosity comes to mind.

"One of my seven cellmates snuck in rolling tobacco, and on Christmas day he gave each of us a freshly rolled cigarette. It was really quite thoughtful," says Bandar, now 26 and an international relations grad student and art director at the nonprofit Prisons Foundation.

But Bandar's experience may be atypical.

Turkey and mashed potatoes with pumpkin pie, heartwarming carols and sweet candy canes, small gifts hand-delivered by a red-suited Santa Claus — this, believe it or not, is Christmas in the can for many inmates around the country.

While religious services are routinely offered for everyone from death-row cons to federal prison "campers," there are no set guidelines on the role Christmas should play in the lives of adult prisoners. Participation in outreach programs — such as Angel Tree, which donates gifts to the children of inmates, or the Prisons Foundation's annual holiday arts and crafts show featuring the work of inmates — are at the discretion of each warden.

For someone like Mark Hacking, who is housed at Salt Lake County Metro jail awaiting trial for the alleged murder of his wife, Christmas will come and go without so much as a "Ho, ho, ho."

"It's just business as usual for us," says SLC Metro Correctional Officer Rebecca Green.

But for convicted mercy killer Jack Kevorkian, there will be a special holiday meal and even a housing-unit decorations contest judged by staff members at the medium-security correctional facility in Lapeer, Mich., where he currently resides.

Still prison food

Prisons Foundation Director Dennis Sobin spent 11 Christmases behind bars in state and federal prisons in Florida, Georgia and Virginia for convictions he would rather not disclose, as he's always maintained his innocence.

Along with the Christmas and Hanukkah music he learned as a musician involved in chapel services, Sobin remembers the holiday meals. In the state system, he says, it was chicken and a special dessert — maybe fruit instead of the everyday, cheaply made rice pudding.

"You may say that's nothing, but compared to a cheese, baloney or peanut-butter sandwich for dinner, that was a very good thing," Sobin says.

Federal prisons, however, offered him real holiday victuals: a choice of ham, chicken or turkey, salad bars and a variety of soft drinks.

"But understand," said former federal inmate David Novak, "sure, there's turkey, pumpkin pie and dressing, but it's like going to a hospital cafeteria for your Christmas dinner."

Novak served a year for mail fraud in 1997. Now, as president of David Novak Consulting, he helps prepare white-collar criminals and others who are facing time in federal penitentiaries.

He won't reveal his clientele — "you'd recognize quite a few names" — but he currently has clients in every minimum-security federal institution in the country with the exception of Yankton, S.D.

Novak has advice for inmates dealing with the holiday blues: "Write. Go into the hurt and the loneliness and write a Christmas story, Hanukkah story, Kwanzaa story, whatever, that can be shared once you do get home."

Greetings from the penitentiary

A unique variation on Novak's "just express yourself" sentiment is the videotaped Christmas greetings made by inmates at Lincoln Correctional Center in Nebraska, a medium/maximum state facility that primarily houses younger first-time

inmates, but also serves sex offenders and the mentally ill.

This December, about 85 prisoners paid $4 — the cost of a 30-minute VHS tape and postage — to record a holiday message that was mailed to their children, spouses, parents or loved ones.

Recreational manager Karisa Bryan plops a chair in front of a fake Christmas tree and gifts, throws a camcorder on a tripod, and lets the men say and do whatever they like. Inmates often play the guitar or piano, read books to their kids or just share their feelings.

What's forbidden? Swearing, gang signs, and stripping.

"Some of them like to take their shirts off and show their muscles. I'm like, 'No, just keep your shirt on,'" Bryan says.

And yes, at least one videotape has been rejected in the three years since Bryan created the program at Lincoln.

"He basically told his family how much he disliked them. It was like, 'I never want to see you again. I hate you.' I just didn't think it was appropriate," Bryan says.

Doing harder time

While special meals and videograms may be a humane act to bestow upon drug offenders, petty thieves and white-collar corporate bandits, what of those who committed violent crimes? Victims' families and advocates wonder if they deserve Christmas cheer.

"As survivors of homicides, we do not have the luxury of celebrating the holidays with our loved one and enjoying things like gifts and candy," says Dan Levey, president of the national board of Parents of Murdered Children, a 100,000-member strong organization that offers support services to families and friends of homicide victims.

Levey's 40-year-old brother was gunned down in 1996 by two gang members who flipped a coin to decide the fate of the married father of two as he sat in his car reading the sports pages.

"If anything, I think [Christmas] should be a day that murderers think of the victims and the families of the people they so violently murdered," Levey says. "At the end of the day, we don't have our loved ones to celebrate with. And to me, you can not square what inmates go through with what the victims and survivors have had to endure."

Likewise, many are concerned that the children of convicts suffer too much during the holidays for the crimes of their parents.

Some 2 million children now have a parent in prison, and they are seven times more likely to become incarcerated themselves, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

"Even though these men and women have made some bad choices, they don't stop loving their kids and their kids don't stop loving them," says Bill Sweeting, New York field director for Angel Tree, an arm of the ministry-based Prison Fellowship organization, which mobilizes churches around the country to deliver gifts to prisoners' children. Each gift is represented as having come directly from the parent.

Angel Tree debuted in Birmingham, Ala., in 1982 when Mary Kay Beard, an ex-prisoner, erected Christmas trees in shopping malls to recruit shoppers to purchase presents for prisoners' children.

Beard served six years in prison for burglary, grand larceny and robbery, and she used to watch her fellow inmates gather soap, shampoo, and toothpaste they received from charity groups to wrap and give to their kids as gifts.

Mark Earley, Prison Fellowship president and former Virginia Attorney General, visits a women's correctional facility in Virginia every September to sign up Angel Tree mothers.

"There's a place on the application where they're asked to put down the message they would like to appear on the gift," Earley says. "Usually it's something like 'Mommy loves you, Mommy hasn't forgotten you, Mommy will be out soon.' And almost without fail they break down and start crying as they write. It's a real reminder of the shame and separation they feel during the holidays."

Inmate consultant Novak concurs.

"For obvious reasons, holidays are a very stressful time for inmates. It's when their internal exile away from family and friends is most apparent to them," Novak says.

"There's mixed emotions here during the holiday season," says Vernell Crittendon, spokesman at San Quentin State prison in Calif., a maximum security prison, where for the past 14 years a select group of inmates dress up like Santa and his elves and hand out toys to the children of incarcerated men during family visits.

"Of course, those who have no family members supporting them are going to get a little depressed," Crittendon says.

And although some prisoners may spend Christmas reflecting upon their lives during religious services or alone in their cells, perhaps, as victims' advocate Levey suggests, the institutions need to strike a greater balance — to take the season a step beyond special meals and gift-giving programs.

"You would hope there would be some time set aside for reflection on the crimes they committed," Levey says. "And that it's not all about getting special treatment during the holidays."