America:After months of relentless campaigning, America's presidential candidate will take a short break over Christmas, giving the voters of Iowa and New Hampshire a couple of days' respite from mailshots, automated phone calls and personal visits at the door.
The candidates will not disappear altogether, however, because most have recorded Christmas messages that will be broadcast in key states throughout the season.
Republican rising star Mike Huckabee started the trend with an apparently innocent ad that features the former Arkansas governor and Baptist minister in front of a Christmas tree and a bookcase.
"Are you about worn out of all the television commercials you've been seeing? Mostly about politics. I don't blame you," he says.
"At this time of year sometimes it's nice to pull aside from all of that and just remember that what really matters is the celebration of the birth of Christ and being with our family and friends."
Huckabee owes much of his recent rise in the polls to his appeal to evangelical Christians and rival campaigns were quick to note that the bookcase in the ad looked uncannily like a cross.
Huckabee laughed off the suggestion that he was sending a subliminal message about his Christian faith, but the controversy surrounding the ad has kept him in the headlines all week and won him hours of free television airtime.
None of the other Republican contenders can compete with Huckabee in terms of Christian credentials and many evangelicals believe that his main rival Mitt Romney, who is a Mormon, is not a Christian at all.
Romney's ad doesn't mention Christmas at all but features a former business partner, Robert Gay, recounting what happened in 1996 when his 14-year-old daughter disappeared in New York for three days.
Romney "stepped forward to take charge. He closed the company and brought almost all our employees to New York. He said, 'I don't care how long it takes - we're going to find her.' He set up a command centre and searched through the night. The man who helped save my daughter was Mitt Romney."
If Huckabee trumps Romney on faith, John McCain beats everyone hands down on heroism and his Christmas ad shows black and white footage of McCain as a prisoner of war in Hanoi. "One night after being mistreated as a POW, a guard loosened the ropes binding me, easing my pain," McCain says in the voiceover.
"On Christmas, that same guard approached me, and without saying a word he drew a cross in the sand. We stood wordlessly looking at the cross remembering the true light of Christmas. I'll never forget that no matter where you are, no matter how difficult the circumstances, there will always be someone who will pick you up."
Among the Democrats, Barack Obama's ad is the most conventional, showing him sitting by a Christmas tree with his wife and two daughters, who wish everyone a "Merry Christmas" at the end.
John Edwards's message is the gloomiest, featuring the candidate in close-up, wearing a somber suit. "One out of every four homeless people on our streets is a veteran. Thirty-seven million Americans live in poverty. Who speaks for them? We do," he says.
Hillary Clinton's ad shows her wrapping presents, each labelled with one of her policy promises, such as "Universal Health Care"; "Bring Troops Home"; and "Middle Class Tax Breaks".
Rudy Giuliani's ad features a list of policies too, but unlike Clinton, Giuliani tries to be funny - and even a little cuddly.
The effect is reminiscent of one of Richard Nixon's awkward Christmas interviews, when he tried to show a human side by rolling on the floor with his dog and struggled to recall a happy childhood memory.
Wearing a bright red, sleeveless jumper, Giuliani dons his crooked, undertaker's smile and barks out his Christmas wish-list: "A safe America, lower taxes, secure borders, job growth, fiscal discipline, strict constructionist judges - and probably a fruit-cake or something."
Another version of the ad has Giuliani adding: "And I really hope that all of the presidential candidates can just get along" as the camera shows Santa Claus next to him. "Ho, ho, ho," Santa says. "I was with you right up until that last one. Ho, ho, ho."
