A Simple Christmas by Mike Huckabee Read Free Book Online Page A

developed, changed some personnel from time to time, but became fairly proficient, and over the years we played as an opening act for Willie Nelson, Grand Funk Railroad, the Charlie Daniels Band, Dionne Warwick, Percy Sledge, and 38 Special just to name a few. We played at two presidential inaugurations, two Republican National Conventions, and such venues as House of Blues in New Orleans and Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Denver. I’m often asked if we were that good, and I answer honestly that we didn’t have to be—we were the only band in America that was fronted by a sitting governor, so we got some nice gigs!
    In 2008, when I started my show on the Fox News Channel, I wanted to make homegrown music a part of it, using amateur, behind-the-scenes workers at the channel whose day jobs were in lighting, graphics, videography, engineering, and writing, but who, like me, had never given up the dream or the joy of playing. The music segment of our show is almost always the highest-rated segment and the audience favorite. Legendary artists like Willie Nelson, Ray Price, James Burton, Neil Sedaka, and Dion are just a few of the guests who have played with the Fox News Channel house band, the Little Rockers. Country greats like Aaron Tippin, Neal McCoy, Tracy Lawrence, Collin Raye, Clay Walker, the Bellamy Brothers, and many others have come on the show to share the stage with amateurs like us.
    But if it hadn’t been for my parents giving in to the demand of my stubborn eleven-year-old self and buying me that guitar for Christmas, none of this would have happened. Without that guitar, I probably never would have gained the confidence to be onstage and make speeches and run for office, and I certainly never would have gained the valuable tools of discipline, practice, and performance that music has taught me.
    The real heroes of this story are Dorsey and Mae Huckabee, my hardworking and loving parents, who really did want to make my dream come true but weren’t sure how they could do it.
    I didn’t know until years later, after I had kids of my own, just how much money ninety-nine dollars was to my parents back in 1966. It was a lot of money and a lot of money that they didn’t have. They could have and should have told me no, but they gave up having a Christmas for themselves and bought me the guitar for which I had begged and pleaded for so long. They couldn’t pay the ninety-nine dollars all at once, so they arranged to make monthly payments to J. C. Penney for a little over a year until they paid it off.
    I wanted a simple Christmas that year. I didn’t ask for a lot of things—just one that meant more to me than anything else I had ever asked for. But what was simple to me was anything but simple to my parents, who had to make a really major sacrifice to give it to me. The best Christmas gifts we get are the ones that represent a sacrifice on the part of the giver. That’s because nothing so reflects what Christmas is all about as does sacrifice. God, who owed us nothing, gave us everything. He gave up more than His comfort and His crown—He gave His life, and it all started right there in a simple manger in Bethlehem.
    It took years before the depth of my parents’ sacrifice really sank in. By then, they were both gone. While they surely had some satisfaction in seeing me play onstage as a teenager and were comforted that as long as the noise of the guitar rang through our little house, they knew where I was, they probably never knew the impact that ninety-nine-dollar guitar had on me. I want to believe that if heaven is a place where all the good things are remembered and the bad things are forgotten, my parents are allowed to watch my show each week and see me playing music with not only my musical idols but theirs as well. They might actually believe that ninety-nine-dollar investment paid off!
    Every Christmas, I still think about that guitar and the sacrifice that it