All the basic ingredients for a holiday party were there: sandwiches and punch, cookies and cakes, three dozen people and an undecorated Christmas tree.
Held in an overheated room on the fourth floor of the Clarence M. Mitchell Jr. Courthouse, it had jokes and carols, dancers and door prizes, hearty hugs and words of inspiration.
But this party was more about who wasn't there: Everette Farmer, Terrance Thompson, Donald Bentley, Brian Bailey, Keisha Spriggs, Barbara Halsey, to name just a few on a mind-numbingly long list - all homicide victims in a city that, through the 1990s, consistently chalked up one of the highest murder rates in the nation.
The party, dubbed "an evening of healing," was held in the state's attorney's Family Bereavement Center, Room 410. Baltimore's area code is also the room number where family members of murder victims go for help. More than 8,000 have passed through since the office's inception 12 years ago.
The event was sponsored by Survivors Against Violence Everywhere (SAVE), a nonprofit group founded nine years ago by a group of relatives of murder victims, mostly mothers, who met through the bereavement center and decided they had to do more than mourn.
Among the first to arrive were four of those charter members: Veda Allen, whose son, Everette Farmer, 22, was shot to death in 1992 in Baltimore's 300th homicide that year; Ellen Bentley, whose son, Donald Bentley, 19, a graduate of the Gilman School, was on summer break from Morehouse College in Atlanta when he was shot outside a Baltimore bar in 1989; Loretta Bailey, whose son, Brian Bailey, once planned on becoming the next Michael Jordan, but was shot to death at age 22 in 1991; and Jessie Snead, whose son, Terrance R. Thompson, 26, died of multiple gunshot wounds in 1993 on his daughter's first day at pre-school.
None of the cases has been solved - troubling to all four mothers. But even if there had been arrests and trials and convictions, the mothers know that, even after a decade or more, the pain doesn't go away.
And Christmas is one of the hardest times to get through.
"Closure? I hate that word 'closure.' There is no closure," Allen said. "But I have learned to move on in my life."
Allen's son was killed less than a week before Christmas, leaving behind two children - Everette Jr., now 11 and an honor student at St. Ignatius Loyola Academy, and Deonte, 9, not yet born when his father died.
"Christmas brings back a lot of fond memories," she said, "and with the memories sometimes sadness ... because of what happened and what possibly could have been or should have been. This is why we feel we should be there to give others some tips on how to survive the holidays."
"It still hurts every day," Snead said. "You just have to learn to get yourself as comfortable as you can. There's not a day goes by that he's not on my mind, but I can function now because I try to do things that will help me and things I know he would have wanted."
That includes spending time with her son's daughters, 1 and 3 when he was killed, 10 and 13 now. "I try to share things with Tierra and Tamara, especially Tamara because she doesn't remember him," Snead said. "I show her videos of him and we talk about him and go visit the cemetery."
The festivities - somewhat subdued, it was still festive - began with an interpretive dance by members of Victory Ministries. The crowd helped itself to a buffet, listening to music until the CD player got stuck on "Santa Claus is Coming to Town." Linda Walker, whose 16-year-old daughter, Keisha Spriggs, was shot and killed less than a week before Christmas 1992, arrived with ornaments and gold glitter glue.
Family members, many of whom brought special ornaments in honor of their lost loved ones, decorated the new ones with their loved one's initials as they listened to the speaker, Valerie Downing-Youngblood, the new director of the bereavement center.
During the holidays, she warned, "some of the feelings you thought you had worked through come back."
Don't isolate yourself, she said. Speak and act positively. Help someone else. She recommended purchasing a gift in their loved one's name and giving it to charity, looking at photographs and cherishing the memories, hanging the stocking of the loved one, even though they are gone.
She warned that, when grieving, the body and mind are more fragile. It's easier to get sick, or depressed.
"That Christmas carol that used to bring tears of joy might now bring an endless flood of tears," she said. She also revealed that, at 15, she lost a sister in a car accident, less than two weeks before Christmas.
After her talk, children in the crowd - there were about five - were asked to string lights on the bare, 6-foot fir. Family members walked to the tree and carefully picked spots to hang their ornaments. One hung a small family portrait. One hung a 15-year-old Snoopy ornament.
James Halsey, whose wife, Barbara, was murdered in 1991, the day before her birthday, hung a blue ornament he had decorated and brought along.
Loretta Bailey, president of SAVE, hung an NBA Washington Wizards ornament, symbolic of her son, Brian, she said, who wanted to be a pro basketball player.
Veda Allen wrote Everette's nickname - "Root," short for Rutabaga - on her ornament, and Jessie Snead wrote Terrance's initials, TRT, adding "I love you my son."
SAVE members advocate for victims' rights legislation, speak at schools and prisons and support other families that have lost relatives to homicide - accompanying them to court, going along to reclaim property from the evidence room, helping to arrange a funeral or talking all night on the phone.
The organization helped open a memorial garden for homicide victims at Cylburn Arboretum and awards college scholarships to survivors of homicide victims.
"We got tired of going over the same stories and felt we could do something more, something to get to the youngsters before something happened," said Ellen Bentley, who also helped establish the Donald Bentley Food Pantry in memory of her son.
The party ended with caroling and the awarding of door prizes. One went to the only person willing to stand up and sing "The Chipmunk Song." Two went to the first to arrive for the event, Georgia Garrett-Moore, whose son Gerald Higgs was killed in 1993.
Like Snead, she is using old family videos to help her granddaughter, now 10, get to know the father she doesn't remember.
Garrett-Moore sat under a giant quilt, the first of several produced by SAVE members, working with families. It is filled with the names and faces of murder victims and covers one wall of the bereavement center.
For a while it hung at the Enoch Pratt Free Library downtown. Then it was at the United Way building. Eventually, SAVE members decided to end the traveling exhibit and keep it at the center permanently.
Explained Jessie Snead: "It just got too heavy."