December 13

White Christmas

By Dave Donaldson

Last night I was invited to attend an event at the prison. The invitation said that there was going to be a Christmas Concert put on by inmates, for staff and volunteers. I was allowed to bring a guest; I brought my wife Linda. 

We were entertained for about an hour and a half by 60 men, who had clearly practiced for this for a while. The men are separated in their day to day lives according to housing units, and events like this are some of the few times that they get to see each other during the year, as participants from different housing units are allowed to be together for this event.

For those of us that arrived a little early, the “band” and choir warmed up, and invited us to sing along to some familiar tunes. The band consisted of five men on guitars, one of them a beautiful 12 string played by a VERY accomplished musician, and one of whom also played keyboard. The man on the keyboard was a guy I’ve written about before, about a year or so ago. He is an older guy, about 10 years my senior, with long gray hair, and seriously strikingly handsome. He’s a bit of a legend in there. A woman who is in her 80’s I’d guess, sitting next to me in the chapel leaned over to me as the band was warming up and said, “Do you volunteer in here? A lot of the men seem to know you.” I smiled and nodded. She continued, pointing to my acquaintance on the keyboard, “You know, they say he used to play for Elvis”. I smiled. Later on, after the program, we were invited to have refreshments provided by the prison staff. One of the older women at our table mentioned, referring to the same man, “You know, I heard he used to play with Sinatra.” I couldn’t wait to see him again some Sunday, and tell him what a stir he was making with the older gals that night.

The men started out with the usual fun Christmas Carols that we all know, with some amazing arrangements, and improvisations (especially on keyboard) that were just plain awesome! They had the place rocking, and executed their talents to raucous applause. As the evening progressed, the choirs mixed and interchanged performers to highlight talents in different housing units, and different songs. By the middle of the program, the tone had switched from secular to sacred, and the voices…the voices. No choir I’ve ever heard had anything on these guys. There is something about a men’s choir with a beautiful tenor or two in the mix that just makes me say, “wow” out loud.

As I was being served by these men singing heartfelt praises to a Savior that some of them have only come to know for the first time in their lives inside of those walls, I studied their faces. As they were completely wrapped up in the joy of this moment – being able to sing praises at the top of their lungs without ridicule, while simultaneously being adored by hundreds of visitors from the outside – I imagined another moment in each of their lives. That moment in a courtroom, where the worst thing they ever did in their life was paraded before a jury and media, and the shame and humiliation they felt as judgment and sentencing was passed. The moment that some of them had, to come face to face with people whom they had harmed, while people who love them sat in the same gallery, weeping for the man they knew - the once innocent boy in whom they had high hopes. The moment in which some of them had to allocute to horrific things that they had done to themselves, or others, in open court. These men, who once stood in shackles in those circumstances, now stood in front of me, dressed in the pristine white uniforms of the corrections system, freely singing praises to a Savior who was, at that very moment, liberating them from who they once were. Tears wetted my eyes as I witnessed this.

I’ll never hear the song, “White Christmas” again, without conjuring this scene.