CEDAR RAPIDS - For most people, Mike Huckabee said, there is a difference between Election Day and Christmas Day.

His new book, "A Simple Christmas: Twelve Stories That Celebrate the True Holiday Spirit," published by Sentinel, a member of Penguin Group, is about Christmas Day without a thought of 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. 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."

Mostly, "A Simple Christmas" is about the common desires to be home and with family at Christmas.

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" 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."