A Simple Christmas Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Introduction

  Chapter 1. - Patience

  Chapter 2. - Sacrifice

  Chapter 3. - Loneliness

  Chapter 4. - Family

  Chapter 5. - Traditions

  Chapter 6. - Crisis

  Chapter 7. - Hope

  Chapter 8. - Stability

  Chapter 9. - Limitations

  Chapter 10. - Transitions

  Chapter 11. - Faith

  Chapter 12. - Rewards

  Acknowledgements

  ALSO BY MIKE HUCKABEE

  Do the Right Thing

  Character Makes a Difference

  From Hope to Higher Ground

  Quit Dig ging Your Grave with a Knife and Fork

  SENTINEL

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  First published in 2009 by Sentinel, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Copyright © Mike Huckabee, 2009

  All rights reserved

  Illustrations by Charles Waller

  eISBN : 978-1-101-15947-7

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  Once you read this book, you’ll understand why I have to dedicate it to members of my family. I do hope they will all still speak to me and invite me to future family gatherings even though they might fear ending up in a future book or even the movie version of this one, which I’m certain Hollywood will want to make.

  So to all my family—wife, kids, sister, cousins, aunts and uncles, in-laws, outlaws, and dogs—my thanks for giving me volumes of material to use for this Christmas memoir.

  Most of all, thanks to God, who gave us the best Christmas of all when he delivered His love for us in person in the form of the baby in Bethlehem, Jesus.

  Preface

  “I’ll be home for Christmas” is more than a classic Bing Crosby song—it’s the sentiment most of us have as December 25 approaches each year. No matter what we do or where we are, there is something inside us that says that we need to be home for Christmas.

  There’s something about being home with family and friends that gives us grounding, a sense of place and perspective that provides stability in what might otherwise be a chaotic and turbulent world. This is especially true at Christmas, which is the one time of year when we confront who we are—I mean who we really are. By observing the traditions of the season, we are able to look back at where we came from and realize just how far we’ve come. We spend time with our family and remember that they are people connected to us not just through our DNA but also by memories and experiences that shaped our lives from their earliest moments. Even though the annual trek home is more painful than pleasant for some people, there is still some magnetic force that compels us to fight crowds, traffic, delays, and inconveniences just to make it home for Christmas.

  For me this pull was never as strong as it was during the Christmas of 2008. It was a few days before Christmas, and I was in New York, having just finished working on that week’s production schedule for my new television show on the Fox News Channel. I was eager to get home for Christmas and had determined that, like a postal worker, neither hail, nor sleet, nor snow was going to keep me from being delivered to my doorstep in North Little Rock, Arkansas.

  Don’t get me wrong—New York City is a truly magical place, especially at Christmas, when some of the world’s most beautiful holiday displays are set up all around Times Square, at Rockefeller Center, and throughout the city. I suppose if a person had to be stuck somewhere for Christmas, New York would be about as decent a place as any, but I didn’t want to be stuck anywhere—not even in New York. I had a simple quest—I wanted to get home. I wasn’t looking for a star-studded, glitzy New York Christmas. I wanted a simple Christmas at home with my family. I didn’t think this was too much to ask, and God help those who stood in my way!

  New York City was a complete mess. Snow and ice had traffic snarled, and flights were being canceled out of all of the airports serving the city. It was the weekend before Christmas, and I had flown into the city on Friday, December 21, after a week in the Bahamas, where my family and I had gone to spend a few days of rest. I needed those few days! It had been a whirl-wind year. I won the Iowa caucuses in my bid to become president and came in second while trying to win the GOP nomination. In March John McCain secured the nomination, and I was left on the sidelines, so I spent the next few months trying to recover from a long, brutal, and financially draining political process. Not long after my campaign ended, I signed a book deal with Penguin Books, a contract with the Fox News Channel for a new television show, and a contract with the ABC Radio network to do daily commentaries. I was on the road just as much as, if not more than, I had been during the campaign, and I spent a lot of time campaigning for McCain and other Republican candidates all over the country. Just a few weeks before Christmas, I finished a grueling book tour that took me to fifty-three cities in eighteen days. I was exhausted physically, emotionally, and mentally. The time I spent in the Bahamas was a lifesaver. I don’t think I even realized just how completely worn out I was until I finally had a chance to rest.

  I took a nonstop JetBlue flight from Nassau to New York’s JFK Airport, and when I got to the city, it was snowing, the temperature was in the twenties, and traffic was gridlocked as only New York traffic can be—a far cry from the beautiful, warm climate I’d left just a few hours earlier. I inched my way toward Midtown to start the preparation for a television show that would air the next day. My flight back home to North Little Rock was set for first thing Sunday morning. I hadn’t been home in almost three weeks and was more than ready to sleep in my own bed and play with my three dogs, who I’m pretty sure had forgotten what I looked like.

  The weather in New York was getting worse, and late Friday afternoon, Delta Air Lines called to tell me that my flight for Sunday was already canceled. Because it was Christmas week, every other flight was booked solid until Tuesday, and even then they could only put me on standby. It was beginning to look like I might not m
ake it home in time, and my hopes for a simple Christmas were beginning to die as things became more and more complicated.

  Because I’m on planes four to five days a week, I have enough frequent flyer miles to qualify for the highest level of service on several airlines. This usually makes traveling a lot easier because I have a special phone number I can call for help, priority when booking and boarding, and usually the opportunity to upgrade to first class for no extra cost. But this weekend these advantages weren’t helping me at all. I knew that the weather was better south of New York and if I could get to Washington, DC, I might be able to get a flight from there. I decided to take a train from New York’s Penn Station to DC late Saturday night after I finished taping the show and then catch an early flight from DC to Arkansas on Sunday. There was space available on the train to DC, and Delta had a flight that would work, but the first two Delta agents I spoke to on the phone told me I couldn’t change my ticket. I explained that I would pay for my ticket and lodging and that, by switching my flight, I would be doing them a favor because I’d be freeing up a seat on one of the flights out of New York. I figured this compromise was more than fair.

  Somehow, neither of the first two people I spoke with saw it that way. They had “rules” and the “rules” wouldn’t let me change the ticket. I asked for a supervisor; I got disconnected. I called back and had to explain my plan, which I thought was brilliant, all over again. I was more than ready to take my problem off their hands and had figured out how to do it at no cost to them! I realize that Christmas is one of the busiest travel seasons of the year and that, with passengers in a hurry to get to where they are going, the reservations and information people at the airlines are frazzled. I also know that my flight wasn’t the only one canceled and that there were hundreds of people just like me who were upset and anxious. I know that. I understand that. But at the time, I didn’t care about being logical or benignly accepting rational excuses. I wanted to get home for Christmas!

  I can be a stubborn person when I want something badly enough. I kept calling the airline and finally talked to someone who seemed to understand that her job was not to read the rule book but to serve the people who paid her salary and help them solve their problems. That agent deserves a raise. Not only that, she should be promoted and put in charge of training other people. She approved the ticket change, I booked a train ticket and hotel room for DC, and despite the train’s being an hour and a half late, I finally made it to DC around 1:00 A.M., snuck a brief nap before getting up at 4:00, went to Reagan National airport, and caught a flight to Arkansas that got me home in time for Christmas, even if it was several hours later than I had planned.

  I felt like Steve Martin’s character in the hilarious movie Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Add a boat to that equation, since I had had to take a boat from the island in the Bahamas where we stayed to Nassau before I flew to New York, and you can basically picture my experience. It took perseverance, patience, and persuasion to do it, but I got home. My eight days at home during Christmas were literally the longest stretch of time I had spent in my own home since my wife, Janet, and I had bought the place two years earlier.

  When people asked me what I wanted for Christmas that year, my response was “I want to be home.” I really meant it. There was no material thing that occupied my imagination and “want list” nearly as much as my simple desire to be home with my wife, kids, and dogs.

  As I went through the logistical gymnastics of finding a way home, I was reminded of how absurd it seems to have to go through so much effort to do something so simple. I couldn’t help but think of how complicated my life had become, with nonstop travel, hotel stays five or more nights a week, speaking engagements around the country, a weekly television show, a constant barrage of e-mails, and plans to do radio commentaries three times a day, five days a week. Don’t misunderstand me—I’m truly grateful to be busy. It’s an enormous blessing to have a job (several, actually!) and be able to pay my bills and expenses. Nonetheless, life is more complicated than I could ever have imagined it growing up in a working-class family in Arkansas. And I thought for Christmas I just wanted things to be simple. I wanted a simple Christmas.

  I thought of the first Christmas and how Joseph and Mary had seen their plans to get home get all messed up as well. I’m sure they wanted to be back in Nazareth for the birth of their baby, but instead they ended up stuck in Bethlehem (though in their case, weather and airlines had nothing to do with it). They didn’t realize it, but they were having an appointment with destiny. Centuries earlier, when the prophets had predicted the birth of the Messiah, the city for his arrival wasn’t Nazareth or even Jerusalem. Instead, it was the sleepy little village of Bethlehem, and although neither Joseph nor Mary had any freinds there, it was inevitable that their baby would be born there. I’m sure they suffered some anxious moments trying to figure out what they would do if they didn’t get home. After all, that’s where their families were. That’s where they would have support and comfort and be surrounded by those who could help make the birth as easy as possible. Instead, all of their hopes and prayers couldn’t sway the will of God, who had determined long ago how His son would be brought into the world.

  There are times in our lives when things go exactly according to plan. But when God has a bigger purpose than we can possibly imagine, none of our efforts—no matter how well in tentioned or practical—will change the course he has set for us. We might be able to get Delta Air Lines to change our flight, but only God can control the actual journey, and no matter how strange or irrational it might seem to us, there is a purpose to the path.

  I’m glad God didn’t find a reason to keep me in New York for Christmas. Had He willed it, I would never have made it home. But luckily, my desire to get home didn’t challenge an eternally prescribed destiny. My only obstacles were weather, airline schedules, and a couple of out-of-sorts reservation agents who just wanted their shifts to end. God orchestrated every moment of the first Christmas—at the dismay, I’m sure, of Joseph and Mary, who must have been frightened out of their wits—but in the end, he kept it simple. And that, I’ve learned, is the true message of Christmas—just keep it simple.

  Introduction

  A Simple Christmas

  Whenever I think about the Christmas story, I think about how, if I were God, I would have done the whole thing very differently. After all, the first Christmas was an incredibly big deal. God had decided to show up on earth in the form of a human being so He could show us once and for all how human life is supposed to be lived. For thousands of years, He had watched from heaven as humans destroyed what He had created so carefully. Being God, He knew this was going to happen, and sure enough, it did, but He had a plan.

  He had sent prophets, given very explicit written instructions, and even blurted out some pretty loud pronouncements on top of mountains—sometimes with fire, other times with floods—but even though His voice was probably even louder than an Aerosmith concert, people kept being, well, people.

  The very first Christmas was going to be a pretty big deal—God wouldn’t just write a book or hold a news conference with a spokesman giving a briefing on the way things needed to be. He was coming in person, which in itself would be huge, since no one had ever actually seen God in person. He was always around, but He never showed up “with skin on” and start walking around like us. This time, He was going to take on the form of a human being and hang out in a body like ours and live in the world with us so He could give us the plan in person and live it out in front of us so we wouldn’t be able to say we didn’t understand. He wasn’t going to just tell us what to do anymore; He was going to show us.

  I know a little about promoting a big event. After all, I did run for president (unsuccessfully, but I still did okay given the budget I had to work with), I ran for governor a few times (successfully), and I have launched a TV show and a daily nationwide radio commentary, and been a best-selling author. Sure, it’s a far cry from creating the
universe, but I figure I have some insight into staging a big event.

  And if I’d been God, this whole Christmas deal would have been handled differently.

  We’re talking about the biggest event since the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, Woodstock, or the inaugural events for my swearing in as president. (Okay, so Woodstock was a muddy mess with good music but not nearly enough porta-potties, and my presidential inauguration got derailed by some guy named Obama, but you get my point.)

  But God showing up on earth in person? With a face we can see and voice we can hear—the whole deal? An event of this magnitude calls for pulling out all the stops. I’d hire the best caterers and some great bands, get the staging just right, and pick a venue that would be impossible for the press to ignore—maybe Times Square or the National Mall, or maybe really rattle the liberals and do the whole thing right in the middle of San Francisco! Of course, we’d do worldwide satellite feeds and set up remote viewing sites everywhere. There would be various levels of sponsorship, product placements, and of course, naming rights. It would make the Super Bowl look like a Little League game!

  But God didn’t do it anything like that. If I didn’t know better, I’d think the way He showed up for the first Christmas was bungled badly by the worst combination of poor planning and failed execution ever. From the standpoint of putting on a big event, He did everything wrong.

  The first Christmas was a simple one. So simple it had all the makings of a first-class disaster. It’s a miracle it turned out well at all. In fact, that’s the whole point. It really was, and remains, a miracle. In fact, it was the greatest miracle of all time. And it really was simple.