By Rachel Crumpler

Gathering with family. Decorating. Viewing Christmas lights. Baking. Unwrapping presents. Eating a festive meal. 

These activities define the holiday season — a favorite time of the year — for so many folks. They eagerly await Christmas for months, flipping into a festive mood as early as the day after Halloween.

But over 31,000 people incarcerated in North Carolina’s prisons, and thousands more spending time behind bars in county jails, are deprived of this seasonal cheer.

“Everything that brings [people in society] peace and happiness are the very things that bring other people depression, gloom and loneliness,” said Anthony Willis, who was incarcerated for 26 years before his release in March 2022.

The holiday season is an especially difficult time to be incarcerated, Willis added. Traditions from home are absent in prison, and the pain of being separated from family is exacerbated.

While he said everyone has their own mindset about Christmas and how to best cope, Willis said the dip in morale among the prison population every year around this time is palpable. 

“What really makes the holidays the holidays is sharing it with people you love — sharing it with people you care about — but whenever you’re separated from those individuals, it loses its spark,” Willis said. 

NC Health News spoke with two formerly incarcerated people and a family member of a third about their experiences behind bars for the winter holidays and reacclimating to celebrating back at home.

April Barber, incarcerated for 31 years

In 1991, at age 15, April Barber was incarcerated and pregnant. Because of her young age, Barber said she was kept separate from the other incarcerated women. That left her alone on Christmas with no one to talk to but her son in her belly, she said.

She tried to block out that the day was even a holiday, and it’s the same approach she took for the decades of Christmases that followed. Otherwise, she said thinking of Christmas on the outside and all the holiday experiences she was missing with her son — enthusiasm around Santa, decorating a tree, opening gifts Christmas morning — could have been debilitating.

“I missed every Christmas from one to 31,” Barber said. “Every year in his life, there’s some way he changed.”

Over time, she said she built bonds with other incarcerated women who leaned on each other to make it through the holiday season. It’s a shared experience, as over half of women incarcerated nationwide have a child younger than 18. They talked about the pain of lost time with their children, made prison meals together and even exchanged gifts purchased from the commissary.

“We would just try to keep each other going and keep our spirits up, so we wouldn’t dwell on what was going on in the real Christmas on the outside,” Barber said. 

Barber added that they couldn’t develop their own prison traditions because of how frequently people are uprooted and moved among facilities. 

However, she said one constant was the Salvation Army’s red box containing hygiene products, a mint candy and a pocket calendar distributed in the prisons every year during the holiday season. 

“I did look for that one gift because it’s something that came from the outside every year,” Barber said.

When Barber was released from prison in March 2022, after Gov. Roy Cooper granted her clemency, she was joyful — and also overwhelmed by the prospect of celebrating Christmas again. 

“Gosh, it’s like how do you answer what you want to do when you’ve been deprived of everything?” Barber said.

The top of her wish list: spending time with her son.

And that’s what she got, spending her first Christmas Day with her son in over 30 years.

This year, as she nears her second Christmas back in the community, Barber said she’s still adjusting to her ability to celebrate.

With her son out of town this year, she will be spending Christmas Eve and part of Christmas Day working at her job caring for residents with dementia. 

“A lot of times people will put you in places like that and forget that you’re there, so sometimes, we that work there are the only family that they see.”

The parallel isn’t lost on her. She spent so many Christmases alone in prison with no family around. Now, she’s finding meaning filling that void for other people.

Robin Gibson, sister of James Gibson who was incarcerated 33 years

Robin Gibson’s brother James went to prison in 1989 at age 26. She lived in Colorado then, with thousands of miles — plus the prison bars — separating them. 

Gibson said the family always gathered for Christmas, and his absence at the holidays was noticeable. It dulled the joy, she said, but they carried on as best they could. Gibson said she did what she could to lift her brother’s spirits from afar. 

She sent him homemade cookies throughout December until the state prison system prohibited it. Then she sent money he could use to buy holiday treats from the commissary and to make phone calls.

“He would call 10 times on Christmas Day and get to talk to everybody,” Gibson said. “We would put it on speaker, and we’d all be trying to talk at once.”

On any other day, Gibson minded when James blew through his phone money in a few days, but not on Christmas. All the calls were welcome — a way to stay connected and include him in the holiday, she said.

In 2016, Gibson moved to Dover, North Carolina, so her brother could have a place to live post-release. She expected that to happen that year, but his release wasn’t granted until years later. 

However, being closer meant she could visit him weekly in prison, including around the holidays.

After James’ release from prison on Oct. 3, 2022, he celebrated his first Christmas at home in decades — surrounded by all his loved ones.

Gibson said the holiday was an amazing day filled with new experiences for her brother. He cut down his first Christmas tree, shopped for gifts, learned how to wrap and ate so many holiday goodies he got sick.

Gibson said James “made out like a bandit” as she and his other loved ones spoiled him, including with a set of tools and a truck he needed for his scrap collecting business. She can still visualize the “crazy grin” he had plastered on his face all day — not from the presents but the togetherness of family.

That first Christmas spent at home turned out to be his last. He died in July 2023 after a heart attack from heatstroke, Gibson said. 

Now Gibson’s holidays will return to being marked by her brother’s absence, though she said this year will hurt on a new level. She got a glimpse of the joy of celebrating Christmas together and had hoped there would be many more.

Anthony Willis, incarcerated for 26 years

Anthony Willis spent his first Christmas behind bars in the Cumberland County jail in 1996. At age 16 — when many other teenagers would be carefree unwrapping gifts — he was away from his family and confronting an uncertain future. 

Seeing an officer walk by wearing a Santa hat was a bitter reminder of Christmas and all that he was missing, Willis said.

His two dozen Christmases after were spent in prison, and Willis remembers how his first holiday after he was sentenced to life without parole was “one of the most suffocating feelings.” He thought he had no hope of partaking in holiday festivities in the community again.

Willis, like other incarcerated folks, came to view Christmas as the most depressing time of the year. Prison is already a lonely, sterile and degrading place, Willis said, but it’s even more pronounced during the holiday season. 

“All you have are your thoughts and regrets,” Willis said.

He said he could have easily let the loneliness and pain of separation overtake him. But instead, he looked for ways to make the day more bearable for himself and others.

He volunteered to set up the Christmas tree in the prison visitation area every year. He organized for various churches in the community to make holiday cards for incarcerated people to receive because he knew how meaningful it felt to receive mail. He wrote Christmas plays, such as “Prison Scrooge,” that brought some comedy and cheer to incarcerated people during the difficult time.

Those efforts gave Willis purpose, he said, so he didn’t feel like giving up.

After over 20 Christmases behind bars, Cooper granted Willis clemency last year. He was released from prison on March 24, 2022. With that release came the opportunity to regain some of the long-lost joy of the holiday season. 

Last year, he spent his first Christmas home in Fayetteville surrounded by his family. 

Willis said family time is what he felt most deprived of all those years, so it felt surreal to have it back. He soaked in the joy of being present for the festivities and seeing young his nieces open gifts. 

“My mom has a lot of health issues, and she just always used to tell me on the phone all the time that ‘I’m trying my best to hold on, son.’ …The fact that she’s still here — she’s still around — and I’m able to spend that time with her is so meaningful.”

Willis also recognizes while he’s spending time with his family again, his victim’s family doesn’t have that opportunity because of a decision he made as a teen.

“Their holidays will never be the same,” Willis said. “There’s someone that’s forever missing for them. I wish I could do something to change the situation, but I can’t, so all I can do now is try to change me and my approach to things to try to add value wherever I go.”

His commutation order stipulates that he is not allowed to reach out to his victim’s family, but he said he prays and hopes their hearts continue to heal.

This year, in addition to family time, Willis said he plans to embrace even more holiday festivities, refusing to take them for granted. He plans to blast Christmas music, view Christmas lights, go caroling and more.

Willis also hasn’t lost sight of the thousands of incarcerated people who don’t yet have the opportunity or may never experience the holiday season at home again. That’s why he’s still committed to finding ways to bring some cheer to incarcerated people, such as delivering a holiday meal to three prisons this year. 

“There is a hidden environment — there’s this hidden world — that oftentimes we don’t think about and that we forget about until something comes on the news,” Willis said.

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