Outside it may be cold and snowy, but on these tapes you’ll find stories that will set your heart ablaze with the warmth of Christmas. Stories so powerful, so touching, they’ll leave you with a lump in your throat, tears in your eyes, and in irresistible urge to share them with someone you love.

Many families make Christmas in My Heart part of their Christmas tradition. They decorate the house for Christmas, then sit down by the fire and share stories from the newest book. Some families read one story a day during the Christmas season. You’ll find that these heartwarming stories add a special touch to your holiday season too.

Stories in this book include: Trouble at the Inn, Charlie’s Blanket, Christmas Day in the Morning, Christmas Lost and Found, A Full House, plus 13 more. To add to your Christmas enjoyment, selected stories from this book are available on cassette, read by Dr. Wheeler.

Christmas for me is now year-long–for almost every day you send me stories. Stories that are brand new (some in handwritten original drafts), stories that are only a few years old, stories that have been around a generation or so, and old, old stories that stubbornly refuse to die. This collection contains all of these–but each has that one crucial ingredient: it breaks through all the emotional barriers we erect to the inner sanctum of the heart. Indeed, to the soul itself.–Joe L. Wheeler.

Joe Wheeler’s writing career started in the fall of 1992 with a collection of heart-tugging stories called Christmas in My Heart, a series that he has become well-known for. Joe Wheeler has been called everything from "Keeper of the Story" to "Father Christmas."  He has been a frequent guest on Dr. James Dobson’s radio show "Focus on the Family", and today is considered to be one of America’s leading story anthologizers, editing collections for nine publishers: Doubleday/Random House, WaterBrook/Random House, Guideposts, Focus on the Family, Tyndale House, Harvest House, Review and Herald Publishing Association, RiverOak Publishing, and Pacific Press Publishing Association.

When asked how he got started, Wheeler tells interviewers that it all dates back to being home-schooled by a remarkable woman, Barbara Leininger Wheeler, his mother (both a teacher and a missionary) in Latin America.  His mother, an elocutionist of the old school, memorized thousands of pages of stories, readings, and poetry, and frequently recited in public.  But her specialty was the old-time, sentimental, Judeo-Christian short stories.  And his mother poured herself – and her stories – into her son, inoculating him with a terminal case of the ‘storyitis virus.’ 

Wheeler has a bachelor’s degree in both history and English from Pacific Union College, a master’s degree in history, a master’s degree in English from California State University, and a Ph.D. in English from Vanderbilt University.  Today, Wheeler is senior fellow for cultural studies at the Center for the New West in Denver, Colorado, and professor emeritus of Columbia Union College in Takoma Park, Maryland.

Wheeler and his wife, Connie, make their home in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado where they receive 200 inches of snow a year.