Christmas, as Alexander Wolcott used to growl, "has us by the throats again." We’re being swept, helpless, into the maelstrom of shopping, wrapping, mailing, decorating, and of course, overeating. For �tis the season of holiday parties, too_in offices, clubs, church basements, other people’s homes. We’ll wear ourselves out with Christmas, but maybe we’ll find time to cherish its meaning.

I go to a party each Christmas that helps me do just that. On arrival, I have to sign in, show I.D., and avow that I carry no knives or other weapons. I stand waiting till a massive door is electronically unbolted. I walk through it, then through a metal detector, then down a long hallway to a set of heavy steel gates. These are unbolted for me; they clang open. I step through, and they clang shut behind me. Then I walk down another glaringly lit hallway to stand outside another steel door. Beyond it is an assembly room, also bright with florescent light.

I am deep inside the Otsego County Detention Center, down next to the old Meadows complex. It’s not a new experience. I’ve been in and out of jail for 30 years, counseling and teaching.

Otsego County has a jail to be proud of. It is clean, efficiently run, staffed by corrections officers who show every sign of high morale. The food is institutional, to be sure, but good and healthy. And the inmates, some of whom can almost match my years of jail time, confirm my judgments. They complain, as do people inside any confining institution. (Soldiers do it, too; and, I can attest, so do monks.) But the inmates know that things could be far, far worse. And are, elsewhere.

I visit our detention center all year long as a member of the Jail Ministry of Otsego County, and I always marvel at its firm but humane atmosphere. That’s the legacy of Sheriff Don Mundy, who is retiring after 17 years in his job. Somehow, and across all that time, Don has done his hard and often grim work without losing his vision or compassion. This has been especially true in his dealings with the jail and with the jail ministry; he’s encouraged the latter from its earliest days. God bless him for it.

The jail ministry is an ecumenical group that offers spiritual and educational support to the jail’s inmates. We’re Methodists, Presbyterians, Catholics, Baptists, Lutherans, Quakers, Assembly of God, Episcopalians, and members of independent churches. We’re clergy and laity, women and men, who all transcend theological differences through an abiding belief: Each inmate is as cherished by God as are we on the outside; to serve them is to follow the Galilean who said, "I was in prison, and you visited me."

That belief has the ministry providing religious services at the jail each Sunday, offering Bible study and an in-house 12-step program, and giving one-on-one counseling to any inmate who requests it. It’s also the basis for a new program to equip inmates for re-enter society. The rigorous course includes vocational counseling, resume writing, interview skills, and, most important, development of work habits and responsibility. The first class has graduated from this program, and a second class is now forming.

Every Christmas a couple of dozen ministry members gather outside the detention center and enter through the steps described above. We end up in that assembly hall, deep inside the jail, to share carols and stories and refreshments with our charges, our friends. The inmates shamble into the hall, scores of them, in blue or orange jumpsuits, most of them wearing flip-flops. Some are shy, some openly friendly. All, I think, are grateful.

I’ve often thought that the greatest gift we bring them is not the programs or the counseling. It’s simply our coming there, week after week. That speaks to them of their worth.

You’ve read recently in the papers that Americans now number 300 million, here in the land of the free. But consider another statistic, one that will grieve you. The Dec. 6 Washington Post, quoting a just-released Justice Department report, says that, "A record 7 million people_one in every 32 U. S. adults_were behind bars, on probation or on parole by the end of last year." And of those, 2.2 million were in prison or jail. That means that, right now, one person in every 130 of us is locked up. (And, for each of them, probably at least two more are working to oversee them. No wonder it’s called "the prison industry.")

But perhaps this is the saddest fact: Most of that bloated prison population comes from recidivism. In many areas, 80 percent of those who finish their terms are, within 18 months, back behind bars.

It’s the hope of reducing that terrible recidivism that has the Jail Ministry doing its work. We believe that, if we can equip our local inmates (most of them pitiably young) with skills and some sense of personal worth, they’ll have a better chance of re-entering our community and staying there, living productive, happy lives.

That’s why we’re in jail the year �round, and why we’ll be at that special Christmas party, sharing in carols and in a kind of communion service of soft drinks and pizza. And speaking, of course, about Christmas, beyond all the glitz and glitter. About an event of centuries ago that brought "light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death," that can guide their feet "into the way of peace."

Jim Atwell lives in and views life from Fly Creek. Learn about his book at JimAtwell.com.