Huckabee book celebrates universal Christmas themes

By James Q. Lynch

The Gazette

For most people, Mike Huckabee says, there is a difference between Election Day and Christmas Day.

His new book, “A Simple Christmas: Twelve Stories That Celebrate the True Holiday Spirit,” is all about Christmas Day without a thought about Election Day.

That may surprise people who know the former Arkansas governor as the winner of the 2008 Republican precinct caucuses and host of a Fox News Channel's “HUCKABEE.”

“This is a very different kind of book for me,” said Huckabee, who will be signing books from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. at Borders, 4000 E. 53rd St., Davenport, from 5 to 6 p.m. at Barnes & Noble, 333 Collins Rd. NE, Bldg. 1, Cedar Rapids, and from 8 to 9 p.m. at Borders, 4100 University Ave., Ste. 115, West Des Moines.

“There's nothing political about it,” he said. “I'm sure there are some people who will be disappointed I'm not trashing Democrats, calling them the anti-Christmas party.”

 Although the stories are about him and his family, Huckabee said the book “is not so much to tell my stories, but to cause people to think of their own.”

On one level, they're merely entertaining. He writes about unwrapping and playing with gifts before Christmas until the year he unwrapped a “new” football that was mud-covered from a pickup game with friends.

After seeing the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show, Huckabee demanded his parents either given him a $99 electric guitar – clearly beyond their means – or nothing at all. As he watched family members open their gifts he began to have second thoughts.

Mostly, “A Simple Christmas” is about the common desires to be home and with family at Christmas – even if you don't know them or really care for them.

He hopes the book causes people “to stop and think that what really matters in all of our lives is the really simple things, the things that give us a sense of being.”

 “A Simple Christmas,” published by Sentinel, a member of Penguin Group, is not meant to be a memoir, Huckabee said. Instead. “if you read these stories you'll see your own family in a lot of them in different ways.”

Huckabee doubts readers will find it preachy in either a theological or political way.

“I think Christmas is more universal than anybody's politics,” he said. “As far as I can tell, Democrats love Christmas too. I don't think Republicans own the holiday.”