That this ridiculously long and challenging year is closing with guests back again under our roof is thanks to the generosity and tenacity of your support for prison hospitality here in rural Wisconsin, and we are thankful to all of you who have supported Mary House over the years, and especially throughout the pandemic.  We are so grateful to be making the house ready for the families who have made holiday plans to  stay at Mary House when they visit the Federal Correctional Facility at Oxford in the coming weeks, and I hope you will consider continuing to support Mary House’s hospitality in the year to come.

2.7 million children in the United States have at least one parent behind bars, and at least 5 million have experienced the incarceration of a parent at some point in their lives.  This year has held challenges and uncertainties, distance, longing and sadness, for all of us.  For these children and their families the added emotional and financial burdens that come with having a family member behind bars have been heaped on top of that full plate of stress and worries.  Prisons, jails, and detention centers in the U.S. “have been among the nation’s most dangerous places when it comes to infections from the coronavirus,” The New York Times reported on April 10, 2021.  And while all of us have struggled with decisions about how to keep ourselves and our loved ones as safe and whole as possible, the families of prisoners have had all of the fear and stress over the health and safety of those they love, without any of the choices.

The children who will stay at Mary House this Advent and holiday season have been carrying an enormous burden of worry for their incarcerated parents.  A burden that children should never ever have to carry, and one that I greatly hope they will be able to lay down during the time they visit here.  Many of us have had the experience this year of finally seeing beloved family and dear ones after months and months apart,  and we know now that the chance to sit together in a room with the ones we love is among the most precious and sacred things on earth.

These children could have told us that before the pandemic.  For many this isn’t the first holiday they’ve faced in a strange place, or missing a part of their family, so they could tell us all a lot about what really matters. Amidst all our furious holiday preparations  they know that it’s not the glitter, or the shopping, or the presents, or the food.  It’s the people we love that we really need, and the chance to spend a day together is the best gift ever.  During  a year that’s seen nearly incomprehensible divisions and distrust grow up between us, when we’ve become so quick to judge that we barely know we’re doing it, these children who are spending their Christmas holiday in cars and planes and busses, traveling to a quirky old house on a dark road on a cold night,  have somehow kept an open heart and a willingness to forgive.  They are proof to us all that love still wins.   

So I am deeply  grateful  to you for your help  in making the house ready for them, this holiday season and throughout the coming year. 

I know that I’ve been asking for your help to keep this house open for a long, long time, and I’m so grateful for your generosity and your confidence in Mary House over the years.  Without you, our small extended family with the big kind, generous, heart, we would not be here at all.  

Thank you for helping us remain here during these challenging months, for helping us re-open to these children and their families, and for keeping our doors open in the year to come.   May your own family and loved ones be safe and well this holiday season, and may your new year arrive with courage and hope.

Thank You, Cassandra Dixon, for Mary House

Your donation to Mary House is Tax Deductible. You can donate to Mary House online, using the button below, or by sending a check to Mary House of Hospitality, 3579 County Road G, Wisconsin Dells, WI 53965