If prisoners made Christmas wish lists for Santa Claus, it's likely that getting out of jail would come close to the top. Now, for thousands of lucky convicts in Germany, that Christmas dream is coming true, thanks to the giving spirit of the country's state governments.

Around 2,400 of Germany's more than 62,000 prisoners will be getting out early to spend Christmas with their friends and loved ones. Fourteen out of Germany's 16 federal states are taking part in the wave of festive cheer. The Scrooges of the detention community are Bavaria and Saxony, who, as in previous years, are not taking part in the Christmas pardons.

The states, which have presumably been making lists and possibly even checking them twice, are making the decision based on who's been naughty or nice. The pre-condition for an early release is good behavior, showing that good boys and girls do in fact get rewarded at Christmas.

No Christmas for sex offenders

In a further example to mischievous children, those who have been especially naughty have no chance of a Christmas release, no matter how much they've been trying to redeem themselves -- in most of the participating states certain classes of prisoners, such as murderers and sex offenders, are excluded from the pardon even if they do have a record of good behavior.

And those convicts who might be tempted to put their stockings over their heads to carry out another bank job, rather than hang them by the fire for Santa, will be spending Christmas in jail in Saxony-Anhalt, where only those who are not expected to recidivate are eligible.

Prisoners whose sentences were due to end by the beginning of January are eligible for the pardon. To make sure they had enough time to do their Christmas shopping, prisoners were released in November or, at the latest, in early December. Supporting the widely held belief that preparations for Christmas start earlier every year, some prisoners were let out as early as October. Experience shows letting them out close to Christmas is a bad idea, the Rhineland-Palatinate Justice Minister Heinz Georg Bamberger told AP, as the search for a place to live and a job is difficult around Christmas time.

As traditional as the X-mas goose

The annual round of pardons has become something of a seasonal tradition in Germany, a country which takes its Christmas customs seriously. Christmas pardons are also practiced in other countries. Probably the most famous example is US President Andrew Johnson's unconditional pardon of Civil War Confederate soldiers on Christmas Day 1868. A slightly less salubrious example took place in Liberia in 2002, when then-president Charles Taylor pardoned a number of convicted murderers -- including his brother-in-law -- in a Christmas gesture of goodwill towards kith and (especially) kin.