Christmas in Elan

X-mas in Elan was one of the most depressing days imaginable because December 25th meant nothing. Staff wanted to be home so only one adult would show up on that day. And of course, for the majority of the teenage inmates, it was horrible because none of us had ever spent a Christmas away from our family.

Your freedom has been taken away from you and the doors are guarded and you are literally being counted every 10 minutes. This was every day in Elan. So you never forgot that. But on days like Christmas (also on your birthday), somehow that feeling got even more magnified.

The worst part was that we actually did have Christmas in Elan, but it was called "Concept Christmas". That is really what it was called. So the staff would say, "on December 29th we will be taking an hour of the schedule to celebrate Concept Christmas".

During that time, we would each be able to open a package that was mailed to us by our parents. And during the day of "Concept Christmas", every staff member would be on duty. Because they knew that a lot of feelings and freak-outs would be happening that day. It was like the architects of the Elan program designed a Christmas to be held at a later date so they could control the outburst with extra staff, while also actively brainwashing us into seeing the real Christmas date as a meaningless day so that they could offer the majority of staff the day off.

Because on December 25th, all we heard was "today is just Wednesday and you will follow the schedule, but Concept Christmas is soon" over and over again. And like most things, the threat that even Concept Christmas could be taken away was very real. In Elan, we always had little trips and events that would be held over our heads as incentive to blindly follow the will of the program.

I remember opening my Concept Christmas package and actually feeling very grateful (because we had nothing in Elan), but it was also clear that parents were given specific rules. I believe I got a magazine and maybe a cassette tape. I am pretty sure that Elan told them that they could only spend 10 bucks per child, because almost everyone got something very, very inexpensive. And even then, it was sad to see the orphans of the house (yes, actual orphans sent to Elan by the State), because they got some shitty concept gift.

So both real Christmas and Concept Christmas were shitty days. People freaked out every single day in Elan, it was just something you got used to. With 60 some kids, it was completely normal to hear one or two kids per day having nervous breakdowns, openly crying, or lashing out at those around them. I even had a few days like that.

But those Christmas days were much worse than normal and between 5 and 10 kids would be "acting out" (as we called it in Elan). Who could blame them? In all of the things I have been through in my life, I have never experienced anything nearly as dehumanizing and horrible as having your freedom taken away. And like I said before, Christmas was an especially poignant reminder of that.