Happy Holidays to all of my dear readers. In honor of the season, my Misfit Toy has a Christmas story to share with you all.

This story highlights the kind of man he is, which is one of the reasons I first fell in love with him and am proud to say he’s my husband.

Lumps of Coal

I came to prison with an LWOP sentence, which meant I was Level 4: High Security until I die. I was told it does not matter how much I rehabilitate, I would never set foot on a lower security level, especially not Level 2. Nevertheless, on February 14, 2018, seventeen years after I entered the system, I did earn my way down to a Level 2 dorm living.

There I faced new personalities, a new routine, and a general layer of cynicism thick enough to stop a knife, which around here, is just good sense. You learn fast at any security level that Christmas in here is less about cheer and more about just surviving another day hoping another fight won’t break out or someone won’t off themself.

Many of the 13 men in my pod have spent more holidays inside prison than outside. They’ve grown accustomed to the annual gift of silence and maybe a lukewarm tray of what is supposed to pass for a holiday meal. They’ve accepted that they’ve been 86ed from the Nice list. All they’ll ever get forever more are lumps of coal.

I wanted to ease that burden.

The Soul of the Room

See, I came to prison with a solid core belief—this place won’t steal my humanity. I won’t allow it. If you let the system treat you like an animal, you’ll start acting like one.

That’s why, that first Christmas in this pod, I decide to do something about this sad group of fellow misfits. Not for applause, but for the soul of the room.

In my quarterly package, I use some of my precious 30-pound weight limit to buy a little Christmas joy. This is from the company that lets you order the good stuff. The fancy pastries—not the canteen staples we buy month after month, year after year. In prison, there is always a Honey Bun. No coconut raspberry cream, no pudding-folded pie. Just the same old Honey Buns. They were here before me, and they’ll be here long after I’m gone.

Operation: Overstuffed Stocking

The package arrives, timed just right for Christmas. It’s heavy, rattling a little with the individually wrapped treasures inside. That’s my signal. That’s when Operation: Overstuffed Stocking begins. I hide the pastries in my locker and wait.

I wait until things have settled down on Christmas Eve. (In my family, the adults get their presents early.) The air is heavy with that institutional quiet—the kind where everyone is trying to remember what they’re missing. I don’t make a speech. I just start walking the pod saying Merry Christmas to each person individually as I slip a nice, heavy, fancy pastry onto their bunk. I pass out 13 of those delicious morsels making sure every guy gets one, regardless of his history, his attitude, or how much I dislike the sound of his snore.

The guys are surprised and not sure what’s going on. It’s a master class in non-verbal communication.

They don’t shout. They don’t jump up and down. They don’t have to.

You see it in their eyes—that brief, momentary flicker of childhood. It’s the look of a man who opens a door expecting the usual nothing and instead sees his whole stocking is overflowing. It’s the taste of goodness—not just the sugar and the filling, but the goodness of being seen as human, as worth something.

I do this every year.

I’ve made it my tradition. No matter how inconvenient it is for me financially, I buy 14 pastries and hand 13 of them out. Because it’s more sentimental for the guys, I now give out my gifts on Christmas morning.

More Than a Number

By holding to this tradition, it cuts through all the usual garbage we deal with. The fights, the noise, the pressure. For a single morning, we are just 14 guys eating a quality pastry. We’re not inmates. We’re not numbers. We’re men who, for a few sweet minutes, get a reminder that even when the world forgets you, we still deserve more than lumps of coal.

That’s the real win. It’s not the sugar rush; it’s the chance to feel like a person again, and to give someone else that chance, too.