Martha Stewart Decorating Inside Like She Did Outside

Dec. 20, 2004 — -- The minute she was indicted, the jokes began: Martha Stewart behind bars. Martha Stewart decorates her cell. The queen of American domesticity, brightening everything up for the holidays ... with horizontal stripes.

But at Alderson Federal Prison Camp in West Virginia, where Stewart is serving a five-month sentence for lying to investigators about a 2001 personal stock sale, they actually have a contest to see which ward puts up the best decorations for Christmas.

Stewart, 63, has 75 days left to go before she leaves Alderson. And now she's getting the chance to do on the inside what she did on the outside.

"Christmas at Alderson -- the prison really goes all-out for the inmates," said Chrisa Gonzalez, a former inmate at the federal minimum-security prison.

Gonzalez spent Christmas at Alderson three years ago on a marijuana conviction. She keeps in touch with current inmates.

"It's wonderful, actually," she said. "It keeps your mind off the fact that you're sitting in prison. You're away from your family -- it gives you something to look forward to."

Stewart, at times in her career, was more closely associated with Christmas decorating than perhaps any other public figure in America. It was the subject of her first television special, in 1986.

"When the pressures of the holiday season get me down," she said on camera, "I try to reflect on those wonderful childhood memories of families and friends, and try to come up with new ideas more special, and more memorable."

American University journalism professor Alicia Shepard said the news of Alderson's Christmas decorating contest "was just too great to pass up. I mean, the irony is just too much." Shepard learned of it while writing a freelance article about Stewart for People magazine.