Christmas. Families are trying to recapture it from Madison Avenue, but the task is anything but easy, for the secular forces of greed and excess spend billions every year controlling the airwaves. Finding islands of serenity in the midst of commercial cannonading will not occur by default. They must be searched for.

Instead of concentrating Christmas into one 24-hour period, many families extend the season from Thanksgiving Eve to Epiphany by sharing one Christmas in My Heart story with the entire family each day. The result is a new vision of the Lord, whose birth, death, and resurrection we celebrate, and a deeper commitment to service for others. Try such a Christmas just once, and Christmas in My Heart will become a treasured family tradition.

Stories in this book include: The Miraculous Staircase, The Stuffed Kitten, A Stolen Christmas, and To See Again, plus 10 others. To add to your Christmas enjoyment, selected stories from this book are available on cassette, read by Dr. Wheeler.

One of the reasons for the magic of Christmas is that it is both a constant, yet always different. That is why each Christmas spawns its own set of memories. In a very significant way, we measure our lives by Christmases. Paradoxically, we have come full circle; the ultimate in prestige is a handwritten letter.

Just so, the ultimate memory builder is not to listen to a video or to see a film on TV or in the theater. No, the ultimate bonding memory is to be read to–live–by a member of one’s family, or by a beloved friend. These are the memories that last, that calls one home across the thousands of miles. Christmas in My Heart provides the stories. All you have to do is read them out loud.–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.