A Simple Christmas.

Mike Huckabee.

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 G.o.d, 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 cla.s.sic 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 G.o.d 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 Na.s.sau 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 make 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 cla.s.s 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 Sat.u.r.day night after I finished taping the show and then catch an early flight from DC to Arkansas on Sunday. There was s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.sengers 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 Na.s.sau 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-cla.s.s 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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. G.o.d 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 G.o.d, I would have done the whole thing very differently. After all, the first Christmas was an incredibly big deal. G.o.d 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 G.o.d, 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 p.r.o.nouncements 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-G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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-cla.s.s 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.

The Christmas story we're used to hearing is so clean and neat. We've grown up seeing the sanitized church version performed at annual pageants each December, in which choirs sing, children put on bathrobes and grab broom handles to be shepherds and wise men, and we see a beautiful production with stars in the sky, angels singing, and a quiet and clean little baby, who never even cries, resting peacefully in a box of hay. Judging from these nice little productions, one would think the Christmas story is a heart-warming, Oprah kind of tale, when the actual version probably resembled something closer to Jerry Springer!

I'm not being disrespectful toward the birth of G.o.d's son. In fact, as strange as it is, that's the way the whole thing was planned. When G.o.d decided to show up in person, He did it in a way that totally defied conventional wisdom. After all, He was the "King," and we are used to kings showing up wearing some fancy clothes and surrounded by an army, a band with lots of loud bra.s.s horns, and an enormous number of attendants to take care of everything from booking the hotels to tipping the baggage handlers to even tasting the food. But the scene of the original Christmas didn't follow this script-not even close.

The story starts with a fairly simple fourteen-year-old girl named Mary and a scraggly teenage boy named Joseph. Mary and Joseph led pretty quiet lives, and neither of them was all that big a deal in their little hometown of Nazareth, which itself was unimportant at that time.

Joseph was Mary's boyfriend. There was nothing unusual about a teenager having a boyfriend, but Mary also had a secret: She had a baby inside her, and she wouldn't be able to hide it much longer. It wasn't as common back then as it is now for a young, unwed girl to become a mother, but it wasn't unheard of. But Mary also had another secret that was unheard of. She adamantly insisted she had never had s.e.x with anyone, including Joseph. That was hard for her parents, or anyone else, for that matter, to believe. The only person who believed Mary when she said she and Joseph had never slept together was Joseph himself. But he was still having a very hard time accepting the idea that Mary really hadn't been with anyone else. He wanted to believe she was telling the truth because he didn't want to have to confront the pain of knowing that the girl he hoped to marry one day had been unfaithful to him even before they had exchanged their vows.

Although there was speculation over who the father of Mary's child was, there was no doubt that this young girl was pregnant. It was humiliating to her and to her family to have people talk behind their backs and gossip about who had gotten Mary pregnant.

Mary and Joseph had discussed marriage, but now a baby would be involved from the beginning, and Joseph would have to accept that it wasn't his. What's worse, Mary not only was claiming that she hadn't been with another man but was actually insistent that an angel had come to her from heaven and announced that she would be having G.o.d's child. The young man demonstrated an amazing love for this girl, having to actually believe either that she was talking to angels and having G.o.d's child or that she was a very mentally disturbed person, but because he loved her so much he was willing to accept her delusional tendencies.

Several months into Mary's pregnancy, Joseph was summoned to the town of Bethlehem, where he had been born, to register for a census that King Herod wanted done. It was clearly a typical government deal-making the entire population travel back to the city of their birth rather than just sending a few census takers to the communities to ask the questions. I would be more critical of such an absurd policy, but today, two thousand years later, the government still does things that are just as inexplicable, like having elderly women take off their shoes and get virtually strip-searched at an airport before getting on a plane to go see their grandkids.

For Mary and Joseph, this meant a trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem; the two towns were about eighty miles apart, but the most popular route took a longer way bypa.s.sing Samaria, making it about a week's journey. This sort of trip-twenty miles or more a day on a donkey or walking over rugged and rocky terrain-was very dangerous for a pregnant girl, especially when there were no hospitals on the way. I'm sure this didn't help Joseph believe Mary's story that she was having G.o.d's child, because wouldn't G.o.d want to do everything possible to make sure that the mother of His child was safe and that His child would be born in a nice, clean, stable place? Instead, it was as if everything that could go wrong did: Young girl gets pregnant, can't really explain who the father is, and is forced to make a long journey with a teenage boy so he can carry out some idiotic government mandate. This was bad enough, but then, to add insult to injury, once the couple arrived at their destination, got counted by the government, and started to head back home, she went into labor.

It's not like there was a stretch of Marriotts along the freeway from Bethlehem to Nazareth. Of course, there were no freeways, either. Back then people would often rent out some s.p.a.ce in their homes to be used as inns for travelers who needed a place to stay. But because of the census, there were more people traveling than usual, so all the extra rooms were filled. The couple was getting pretty desperate when a local resident, who felt sorry for these two young teenagers, offered to let them camp out in his barn for the night. The barn was nothing like the red wooden ones we see in the cornfields of Iowa today. In fact, it was actually a stone cave, since it was fairly typical in that day to use natural grottoes as shelters for animals.

Throughout history, this "innkeeper," as he has been described, has been vilified for "having no room in the inn" and forcing a frightened teenage mother to give birth to the son of G.o.d in such an uncomfortable, dirty place. But this is unfair to him. He couldn't give what he didn't have (a vacant room), but he gave what he did have and appears to have done so willingly and joyfully. We can't blame him for the lack of s.p.a.ce, but we can certainly credit him for trying to make the best of a bad situation. At least he gave what he had; many of us have far more than an animal shelter but don't even offer that to G.o.d. We act with an air of indignation that we'd certainly make the comfort of Jesus a higher priority, but would we? Jesus has never expected us to give Him what we wished we had, but rather has always tested to see if we would simply give from what we did have.

Have you ever said, "If I had a million dollars, I'd give G.o.d half "? Get over it. G.o.d knows you don't have a million dollars, and if he really wanted you to have it, he'd probably give it to you. But you do have something-probably more than you think-so use what you have.

It's not known whether the innkeeper at the Bethlehem "Barnyard Inn" provided any a.s.sistance to the young couple other than the s.p.a.ce, but it seems evident that, no matter what he did, it still wasn't the best of circ.u.mstances for a birth. Instead of a nice birthing room with soft music and sterile walls and floors, Joseph and Mary had a cave full of barnyard animals. Instead of nurses and doctors with pristine hospital gowns and masks, the most a.s.sistance the couple could've hoped to receive would've been from some local woman who might have overheard the screams of the scared teenage girl, and most likely the screams of her equally scared teenage boyfriend. Sheep, goats, and other livestock had probably been the only previous occupants of that little cave, and we can only imagine the odor and filth that likely greeted Jesus when He chose to arrive on earth as a human being for the first time. The anxiety of being away from her own mother and family would have been traumatic enough for Mary, but I can only imagine the sheer terror she felt as the intense pain of labor set in and she had no one nearby to offer Lamaze coaching, encouragement, or words of experience, much less a saddle block or an epidural.

We always see the sanitized version of the birth of Jesus, a bloodless, somber, and somewhat silent affair, as depicted in the various church Christmas cantatas or typified by the cla.s.sic hymn "Silent Night." Silent night my foot! I'll bet that Mary and Joseph were both screaming and the baby was crying and the animals were all wound up as well. It may have been an "immaculate conception," but the notion that the birth was immaculate is definitely a stretch. It was the same b.l.o.o.d.y, yucky mess that marks any birth, except at this one there were no clean towels, sterilized clips to cut the umbilical cord, or incubator to place the child in to keep him warm. In fact, one thing we do know was that upon his birth, Jesus was "wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger." How precious! Oh, really? Swaddling clothes are nothing more than rags that were tightly wrapped around a newborn to keep him warm, dry, and secure.

The "manger" was nowhere near as romantic as it sounds. It was simply a rough wood water or feed trough for the animals. Not long before the son of G.o.d was placed in it, livestock had eaten grain out of it. G.o.d spent His first few moments as a human in a food dish.

From our perspective this sounds like a plan gone bust. But it wasn't a plan gone bust. It was the plan from the beginning. G.o.d had no intention of opening the sky and landing like a little Superman from a faraway planet. He didn't plot an arrival that was all about huge ceremonies and fine linens, festive music, scrubby-clean surroundings, and the latest advancements in medical technology. From the beginning, G.o.d wanted to show up in the lowliest of conditions so that in the future, no one would a.s.sume that their own situation was simply too humble as to merit His attention. However low people might feel, G.o.d wanted to demonstrate that He'd "been there, done that." His first bed was an animal's food dish, His first outfit was some dirty old rags, and His first roommates were cows and sheep. Top that, whiners of the world!

I once heard a Christmas sermon by a minister who seemed to get the real picture. The sermon was called "Making Love on a Dirty Street." Sure grabs your attention, huh? The t.i.tle might be a bit risque for some tastes, but it pretty well makes it clear that the greatest act of G.o.d's love happened in the least likely of places, and it reminds us that if G.o.d can show up for his own arrival on earth in a place like that, then He can show up wherever we are, no matter how dirty, dangerous, or humble it may be.

It's an expression not of humility but of arrogance to say, "G.o.d wouldn't understand how low I feel or how horrible my situation is." If anything, most of us can't ever imagine just how low and horrible His situation started out to be. Next time you start to think you have it really bad, take some comfort in knowing that G.o.d understands exactly how you feel.

That's the real Christmas story. It wasn't pretty and pristine but dark and dirty. It was a humiliating experience for the young lady who had to become a woman the night she gave birth to G.o.d's own son. She probably wondered why the Creator of the universe didn't provide a better staging area for his arrival, but the nice stages, melodious music, and fancy costumes would have to wait a few centuries until churches came along and added them to the picture. But who can blame the church for coming up with an inaccurate version of the story? The real version seemed so unlikely and so hard to explain and defend that it's easier to tell the modern version. Oh, sure, some shepherds eventually showed up, but wouldn't you think that the birth of the son of G.o.d would warrant a visit from the mayor or at least a letter from the chamber of commerce? Instead, Jesus was welcomed into the world by some young boys herding sheep in the middle of the night who dropped by the cave full of cows to say, "Hey, G.o.d, glad you came."

We're used to Christmas being a time of comfort, celebration, and good times. We exchange gifts with our friends and family, dine on a feast in a nice, warm home, and maybe relax by a warm fire as we sip hot cocoa. We dress up in nice clothes and go to church to light candles, sing pretty songs, and bow our heads in reverence to the birth of G.o.d's son. We fuss for weeks in advance to make sure everything is just right-the gifts are perfect, the decorations are hung, and the Christmas ham is juicy and delicious. If something doesn't go according to our plan, we think Christmas will be ruined, but we forget the real story of that first Christmas. It's hard to think that the Nativity could have been so dirty and dangerous when we're sitting in a quiet church or nestled in warm sweaters by the Christmas tree, but if we take time to think about the first Christmas the way it really was, we might better appreciate all the things G.o.d has blessed us with a bit more.

This book is a collection of Christmas stories from my past that have taught me valuable lessons about what Christmas is really all about. Many of them are funny. Some of them are sad. I hope you enjoy reading them, but I also hope that you take some time to reflect on the first Christmas and that you remember how simple that first Christmas really was.

Patience.

"You'll just have to wait until Christmas!"

I heard that a lot during my childhood and never liked it. Even though we spend weeks preparing for Christmas, all of the antic.i.p.ation and excitement is focused on December 25. Until then, we are required to stare longingly at all of the nicely wrapped boxes with our names on them sitting under the tree and wonder what fantastic gift is waiting for us-so close yet so far. I've never understood the point in waiting until a particular day to get a perfectly good gift that has, obviously, already been purchased and is intended specifically for you. Why not just let the person get as much enjoyment out of it as possible and give it to them right away?

In most areas of my life, I have matured and seasoned with age, but I have never outgrown my impatience, and I still don't understand this idea of "waiting until Christmas." Anything as wonderful as Christmas surely ought to be celebrated and observed as soon as possible, right?

I've never been a patient man. I've asked G.o.d to grant me patience, but my prayer usually goes something like, "Lord, give me patience and give it to me right now!" I've never understood why I should have to wait to get something tomorrow if it's possible to get it today. I love jet aircraft, microwave ovens, shopping online twenty-four hours a day, and overnight shipping. If Fred Smith hadn't beaten me to it, I'm pretty sure I would have invented Federal Express just so I could get my stuff quicker.

I don't stand in line for anything that isn't absolutely necessary-even at the airport. I was one of the early sign-ups to pay extra for a "Fly CLEAR" card, which allowed me, for an annual fee, to get a background check, fingerprints and an iris scan, and a biometric ID. I still had to go through security, mind you (the whole thing with shoes off, junk out of pockets, laptop in the plastic washtub, etc.), but the CLEAR card saved me time, and that was helpful on the days when I was really pushing it to catch my plane on time (especially since I'm sure as heck not important enough for an airline to hold a plane for me). Sure it's extra money, and some people might think it's unnecessary, but to me, it's worth every penny. Sadly, CLEAR abruptly went out of business in the summer of 2009. I guess not many people were as impatient as me.

I hate lines so much that I've missed eating at great restaurants, going to a lot of movies and concerts, and meeting famous and important people because it involved standing in line. Take my word for it, if you see me standing in a long line, it's either because there's something I have to do, there's something I want to do very intensely (not likely), or (more likely) my wife is with me and she thinks it's worth the wait.

My impatience is the stuff of legend with my kids. They love regaling their friends with stories of my obsession with not wasting time in a line or waiting for a "special day" like Father's Day or my birthday to get something I want. They dread buying me Christmas presents because they know that if I tell them I want something, I'm likely to just buy it for myself before they can get it, wrap it, and put it under the tree.

When my kids were little, my wife, Janet, and I saved money for two years for a trip to Disney World. I had heard Disney sometimes has long lines at peak season, so I did my usual thorough research. I bought both the official and unofficial guidebooks to the parks, and I actually found out which month and which days of that month had the lowest number of visitors and planned our trip during those days. I plotted our every move-what time to enter the park, which entrance to go through, and which rides would be most efficient to ride and in what order. I was as much a drill sergeant during this trip as I was a dad, but by gosh, we stayed on schedule!

The whole time, my kids rolled their eyes and made fun of me, but we never waited in line longer than a minute or two, and we rode every ride and saw every attraction in the Magic Kingdom, MGM, and Epcot. My kids' friends told stories of how when they went to Disney, they only got to ride some of the amus.e.m.e.nts because they stood in line so long and missed things they wanted to do. My kids might have laughed at their obsessed father and his printed schedule, but they didn't miss a thing! In fact, they even got to ride some of the really cool rides several times.

On another occasion, when I took them to Israel, they called it the Today I Ran Where Jesus Walked Tour in recognition of the brisk pace at which we sprinted around the majestic land of the Bible. I do think that if Moses had had me along for the journey to the Promised Land, we could have shaved off a few of those forty years wandering around in the desert.

Most kids get excited around Christmastime, especially in the run-up to opening presents, but I was especially eager (and, admittedly, still am). I know that patience is supposed to be a virtue and all that, but I never could see anything all that virtuous about knowing darn well what I wanted and having to be tortured by the fact that even though it had already been purchased, wrapped, and placed under the tree, I had to wait until December 25 to actually get to use it. Made no sense to me. So I decided to beat the system.

My parents both worked, and my sister, Pat, and I used to stay with my grandparents, who lived across the street, during the day until either our mom or our dad got home. As we got a bit older, we started staying at our house by ourselves. In those days, it was pretty safe for parents to leave their kids at home alone, since there wasn't much crime and no one even bothered to lock their doors. There was no Internet, so our parents didn't have to worry that we were browsing p.o.r.nography sites, and since our only TV was a black-and-white Philco that took several minutes to warm up and only received three channels originating from Shreveport, Louisiana, there was no danger of us watching any inappropriate television. Other than Popeye cartoons and The Three Stooges, there wasn't much that interested us on TV anyway, and it was easier and more fun to just join all the other neighborhood kids for pretty much unrestricted romping through the neighborhood until it got too dark or we got too hungry to stay outside.

As Christmas approached and boxes began appearing under the tree with my name on them, I became convinced that it was absurd to let good days of play go to waste, so I convinced Pat, who is two years older than me, that we should make sure that the packages contained the things we wanted and that taking the time to inspect them before Christmas would ensure that all the gifts were in good working order and not damaged in shipping. For whatever reason, it seemed logical to her, and so we began our annual secret Christmas tradition of what I like to call the "real twelve days of Christmas."

Pat was not only more patient than I was but also quite skillful at unwrapping the gifts, carefully sliding the gift wrap from the boxes, and then very artfully rewrapping them so that all of the loot was back under the tree, just as it had been, before our parents got home. Pat was a theater and English major in college and later taught acting and theater at the high-school level for many years, but I don't think she gave me proper credit for helping to launch her career by giving her the opportunity to hone her acting chops by explaining to our parents how anxious we were to know what was in our Christmas packages and asking if they would please tell us or let us open something early. Her talent for feigning total ignorance of what we'd be getting for Christmas in the days running up to the big moment was brilliant, but Christmas morning was truly an Oscar-worthy performance as she shrieked with glee and acted flabbergasted as she opened her boxes and convinced everyone in the room that she was absolutely surprised to behold these fine gifts. Heck, she had me believing that she was surprised, and I knew darn well that she had already had that thing out of the box every day for the past two weeks!

I also did my best to convey surprise as I opened my gifts. Phrases like "Wow! I can't believe it!" freely burst from my mouth when the only thing that would have surprised me was if, somehow, I had gotten anything other than whatever toy I held in my hands. My parents beamed as they watched my sister and me scream with delight and awe and undoubtedly congratulated themselves for their brilliant gift selection and for doing such a fine job of creating just the right magic of Christmas suspense.

Sometimes, my parents got us gifts that were too large to be wrapped and placed under the tree, but that didn't pose any problem for us. We got pretty good at combing every possible hiding place that might exist in our house, and few items escaped our detective work. It's too bad that we weren't a.s.signed the task of locating the body of Jimmy Hoffa when the longtime labor boss disappeared. I'm pretty sure we could have found him in short order.

We didn't keep a record of just how many years this whole Christmas-morning-surprise business continued, since we didn't want to leave any records of the crime. We were practicing plausible deniability long before we knew what that meant or how it could be used in a cover-up. It's fair to say that most of our early Christmas experiences were filled with joy on two fronts- joy that we got something, and greater joy for having enjoyed our gifts and not gotten caught, even though we had already worn some of them out long before their official unveiling.

It's a well-known fact that most criminals get sloppy once they become successful, and while I'm not sure that what we did was an actual crime, I have chosen not to reveal these stories until now, when I am sure the statute of limitations has long since pa.s.sed on any punishment my parents could dole out. Until now, I was certain that, if they found out what my sister and I had been up to, they would cut us out of the will.

Even though we weren't criminals, our "crime" did become sloppier as time went on. Our ruse came to a crashing halt one particularly careless Christmas when I was about nine or ten during which I got sloppy in more ways than one. My requested gift that year was a new football. Like most of what we received at Christmas, it would be ordered from one of three Christmas catalogs that came to our house-Sears, Montgomery Ward, and J. C. Penney.

After school, football fairly well dominated the afternoons for the kids of our neighborhood during the fall football season. We'd gather on the vacant field behind my grandparents' house and play until it was so dark that the football hit us in the face because we couldn't see it anymore.

My parents bought me my requested gift that year-a brown leather J.C. Higgins football from Sears. It was a nice ball, and I was excited to use it. My friends and I always hoped that at least one of us got a new football each year, because it usually took us about that long to wear the old one out. This was the first year that I was getting the football, and given that it was my first really official, regulation-sized, leather football, I was pretty proud of it and could hardly be expected to wait until Christmas Day to play with it. Heck, the season would end pretty soon after that, and I couldn't think of any reason to miss out on a couple of prime weeks to enjoy such a great gift.

Each day, Pat and I would hurry home from school and she would go to work like a skillful surgeon removing the tape and paper, and we'd spend the afternoon playing with our new stuff until it was time to put everything back where we'd gotten it before our parents got home.

The year I got my football, I was so excited to use it that I guess one day our game ran a little late and I wasn't as careful as I should have been when I had to put the ball away. I just knew that when I opened my presents on Christmas Day and tore into the box with the football, all my now keenly developed acting skills would never mask the fact that my "brand new" football was covered in mud! I suggested that maybe it was a new marketing ploy by Sears to create a greater sense of reality by shipping the football with mud and dirt already on it. I admit that it was a pretty lame explanation, but I didn't have much to work with. With suspicions now aroused, further examination of our Christmas loot revealed a chemistry set with half the experiments already done and a doll with batteries not included that somehow had mysteriously been blessed with new batteries.

The jig was up. We almost had our gifts that year confiscated and sent to some kids in China. My parents had always told me, "Eat every bite of food on that plate! There are kids in China who would be glad to have it, so you aren't going to waste it," and as disappointed as I was at the prospect of having my gifts sent halfway around the world, I figured it was only fair that some little Chinese boy get my football, since I'd been eating his food for years. I wasn't sure if he would even understand football, but I had learned my lesson! At any rate, my parents finally cooled off before they actually sent the toys to Shanghai. I actually think they thought it was kind of funny and even admired how incredibly resourceful Pat and I had turned out to be. I think they figured that with gall like that, we'd end up either running the country or in jail. Luckily, I've ended up closer to the former than the latter, and since I've since stopped unwrapping my Christmas gifts early, I hope it will stay that way.

I have to confess that, although I don't sneak open my presents anymore, I haven't really changed much. I still want to open stuff once it's under the tree. I figure there's stuff there I might enjoy now, and if a truck were to run me over before Christmas Day, I'd never even know what I got, never would have the pleasure of using it, and wouldn't have the opportunity to thank the person who got it for me. For years my wife has hidden presents so I couldn't shake the boxes or worse, open and reseal them. (She's heard the stories.) Of course, she hides things so well that every year, there are at least a couple of presents that she can't find again. Some Christmas items don't arrive until March or April when she accidently stumbles across long-lost and virtually forgotten Christmas packages. This only validates my still-strong view that we should give the gifts upon purchase to avoid such embarra.s.sing moments as having hidden the presents so well that a team from CSI has to come in and help find them.

I admit that I'm a bit obsessive on the patience at Christmas issue, but most everyone wants Christmas to come sooner rather than later. I'll admit that maybe my eagerness for presents is a bit extreme, and I'll admit that some things are worth the wait (at least having to wait to get that brand-new toy or gadget makes it even more exciting when you actually do get it), but Christmas is not just about the gifts, the food, and the decorations. I think the excitement over Christmas comes from a longing in the human spirit to know if there really is a G.o.d and, if there is, to get together with him right away. For hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus, the prophets were telling everyone to get ready because He was coming. They thought it would be soon, though it didn't seem to be happening on their timetable.

When it did happen, it really snuck up on just about everyone. G.o.d obviously didn't want the kind of manufactured joy and superficial "frou-frou" that would have inevitably surrounded a highly publicized entrance on the planet. He kept things simple. And He kept us waiting and never caved in to the impatience, even the petulance, of the prophets and priests who thought His coming would bring glory to them. After all, wouldn't it be worth the wait? If everlasting life isn't worth waiting for, then what is?! By the time Jesus really did show up in Bethlehem, some of the most religious people and the high religious leaders had things all planned for His arrival, and they were pretty much in the center of the whole show. That's one of the reasons they didn't recognize the event when it did happen. The elaborate and opulent entrance that they envisioned never took place. No palace, but instead a little cave full of farm animals. There weren't fine linens and silks like they had prepared, just some strips of worn cloth that were used to wrap up the little baby.

This to me sounds like the perfect Christmas. Idon't mean the dangerous labor that the young Mary had to go through or the fear she and Joseph must have felt knowing they were all alone in the desert with no one to help them deliver this child into the world. I mean the lack of pomp and wrapping. I never have liked all that wrapping, and I've spent my life wanting to take the wrapping off the things people give me. I just can't wait. I believe that gifts should be given in a spirit of goodwill, not a spirit of "You can't have it until the day you're supposed to have it." Maybe it's a character flaw, but I like to think of it as part of my spiritual DNA. I really believe that the arrival of Jesus on earth is such a big deal that I can't wait to find out about it. I'm ready to unwrap Him and get Him moving around and doing big things. I can't see a reason to keep Him hidden from everybody. A lot of people need Him now. This is the true meaning of Christmas. The presents are just something extra, and couldn't it be argued that making people wait until Christmas to open their much-antic.i.p.ated gifts takes the attention away from what Christmas is really all about? I think that's a pretty good argument, don't you?

I know I need to be more patient about some things in life-I really do. Maybe this year I'll make a concerted effort to not shake the boxes under the tree, and maybe if I ask for something, I'll actually let one of my kids buy it for me. (Though considering I'm pretty set in my ways, that's pretty unlikely.) But footb.a.l.l.s and chemistry sets aside, I still don't believe that we need to wait for some "special day" to find the real meaning of Christmas.

Yes, I've come to terms with my "sins" of unwrapping gifts before Christmas as a child and scheming to open them early even as an adult. And I've also come to realize that antic.i.p.ation helps you appreciate things more. I could eat a green tomato and be fine, but allowing it to ripen to a bright red will give it the full flavor G.o.d intended it to have. I have learned that a carefully aged steak will have a full-bodied flavor that far surpa.s.ses that of cheaper cuts of meat. And I also know that the lifetime I spend on this broken earth filled with all of its shortcomings and problems and pressures will help me appreciate Heaven that much more when I finally get there.

There are some things in life that are best when experienced in their proper season and at the appropriate moment. It was a hard lesson for me to accept when I was a kid who just couldn't wait to get my new football, but I get it now. So what if it took me fifty years to figure it out?

I've also learned that even though presents are great, the greatest gift of all is the one G.o.d gave us that very first Christmas. He gave us the gift of life and of His love. Luckily, that's not something we have to wait for anymore!

Sacrifice.

On February 9, 1964, I was one of seventy-three million Americans watching The Ed Sullivan Show when the Beatles made their first appearance in the United States. My family usually watched Ed Sullivan anyway, but that night was something special.

Like many kids who saw this quartet of long-haired Brits with electric guitars and drums, I realized their music was something very different, and I immediately knew that I wanted a guitar so I could become one of the Beatles. So what if I was only eight years old at the time and had never played a guitar in my life? I wasn't concerned with minor details like that, and playing a guitarrealloud and having girls scream for me seemed like a great goal in life. I was hooked.

The kids in my neighborhood were just as stricken as I was, and we started gathering c.o.ke bottles that we found discarded on the side of the road and turning them in for their two-cent deposit value. Eventually we earned enough to buy the 45 rpm record of "I Want to Hold Your Hand," with "I Saw Her Standing There" on the B side of the record. It was the first record I ever bought. Before that, I only had little 78 rpm recordings of children's stories with songs, like "The Poky Little Puppy" and "Goldilocks and the Three Bears." c.o.ke bottles (in the South, we call all soda c.o.ke even if it's actually a different brand) were the great equalizer of economic disparity among kids where I came from. Some kids automatically got money from their parents as an allowance, which seemed pretty terrific, but the rest of us could take our little red wagons (everyone had one) and pull them around town and pick up enough empty bottles to get some easy money, even if it did require some serious scavenging around tall weeds and ditches.

The little record player I had was better suited for "Poky Little Puppy" records, but it would play a 45, although I had to turn the volume all the way up to get anywhere near the "rock and roll" level I wanted. The little two-inch speaker distorted horribly when pushed up to ten on the dial, but I didn't care. The louder the better. Unfortunately, the louder-the-better mind-set stayed with me after I advanced to larger speakers backed up by an amplifier that emitted 120 decibels-enough to take paint off the wall! Yes, I know that I shouldn't have played music that loudly, and yes, it has affected my hearing somewhat, and yes, I regret it. I have already had the lectures from my parents when I was a kid and from doctors as an adult, so please spare me another one!

Playing the 45s and later the LP alb.u.ms of the Beatles was great, but that really wasn't enough to fulfill my pa.s.sion for rock and roll. That summer, several kids in the neighborhood decided we would produce a Beatles show for our parents and all the neighbors. Of course, we didn't have real instruments and none of us knew how to play, but those were minor details. We would make our own instruments and pantomime the songs played by the record player.

Every kid in the neighborhood had a job. My sister Pat ran the record player. Amelia Leverett from down the street sold tickets and c.o.kes. The "Beatles" consisted of Tom Frazier as George Harrison (he would later give up being a Beatle to become a prominent hand surgeon); Carol Frazier (Tom's sister, who is now married and works as a community-affairs specialist at a pediatric hospital) as Ringo; Betty Rodden (who, last I heard, was a basketball coach) as John Lennon; and me as Paul McCartney, the ba.s.s player (I'm still one today). Bob "Bo" Frazier, the little brother of Tom and Carol (now a CPA), was the opening act and entertained the audience by wearing a bedsheet and singing a song called "Ghostly Solo." It had absolutely nothing to do with the Beatles, but Mr. and Mrs. Frazier wouldn't let us use their back patio as a stage unless we included Bo in the show.

Our guitars were cardboard cutouts taped and glued to yardsticks, and the drums were made from round patio tables turned upside down. The larger tables were used for the ba.s.s drums, and the smaller tables were for the other drums. Cymbals were cardboard cutouts attached to mop handles.

Our families and the other neighbors were quite charitable and paid twenty-five cents each for a ticket to watch us lip synch as many Beatles records as we had been able to purchase with the money earned from collecting c.o.ke bottles. I'm sure they were all glad we hadn't found more bottles!