The gifts are modest, and often signed with equal measures of love and regret, but each holds a promise that may be more valuable than anything else these children will receive on Christmas morning.

That’s the hope, at least, of those involved in the Angel Tree program of the Prison Fellowship Ministries, which works with churches to provide gifts to children whose parents are inmates in jails and prisons throughout the country.

“This is an opportunity at Christmas to begin long-term relationships between families of prisoners and people who can serve as role models for the children,” said Norm Buck, an Old Town business consultant and the northern Maine coordinator for the international ministry, founded by convicted Watergate conspirator Chuck Colson. “Statistics show that 60 percent of these children, because drugs and alcohol are so common in their lives, will wind up in prison someday like their parents. It’s a generational curse.”

The Christmas program begins with the prisoners themselves, said Buck, whose gift list includes 162 Maine children in five counties. Inmates who want to participate – and who are not prohibited by law from having contact with their families – write messages that will accompany the gifts given in their names to their children back home.

“I’m sorry I messed up,” one inmate wrote recently to his child in Maine. “I wish I could be home, and I love you.”

“This will be our last Christmas apart. Love Daddy,” wrote a prisoner to his 3-year-old daughter.

“To Angel Face, I love you,” said a message from an imprisoned mother to her daughter.

“I’m sorry that I’ve lost you. I love you,” wrote a Maine prisoner whose child now is in state custody.

Coordinators such as Buck then try to find churches of any denomination near the prisoners’ families that might like to become involved in the gift-giving effort, or perhaps more broadly as family sponsors. For those children fortunate enough to live in comfortable, stable homes, the donated gifts and poignant messages from faraway parents may be their only involvement with the program. But for the large majority of prisoners’ kids, whose home lives are anything but secure, the gift can be just the first gesture of neighborly goodwill and compassion that extends throughout the year.

“The families might decide to come to the church, where they can feel like they belong to a community of people who care about them,” Buck said. “For a lot of kids, having a parent go away to prison is the most traumatic event of their lives. They can feel stigmatized by it. Growing up in poor, troubled homes, or moving from one foster home to another, many of them wind up following in their parents’ footsteps and making the same mistakes in life. So the idea is to find people who can be active in the lives of these children and serve as mentors and good role models for them to follow.”

The Rev. Betty Palmer, a pastor in Machias, works with four Down East churches that have adopted more than 90 children of inmates and provide assistance to those who are raising them.

“One church in Presque Isle has been involved for a number of years,” Buck said. “In one family they reached out to, the father started going to the church when he got out of prison. He got his life and his family back together again, and now they’ve adopted a family of their own. It really can change lives.”

For more information on the Prison Fellowship Ministries’ Angel Tree program, call Norm Buck at 827-5715.