A Treasury of Christmas Stories

Here it is: Christmas in My Heart, book 11, the anchor book for our second decade. How incredibly God has led since that first collection came off the press late summer of 1992! We wondered if we'd ever sell out our first printing of 5,000 copies. Now these Christmas collections have gone around the world.

Since we reached our tenth anniversary of the series, more and more devotees of the series are writing to ask how they might secure the entire collection of anthologized Christmas stories. Only in the Review and Herald series can they find them all. These seekers are plainly worried because they are aware of the difficulty of keeping books in print today. Fortunately, the entire Review and Herald series is still available.

Another reason for the upsurge of interest in completing the series is the Currier & Ives covers. Together, they constitute a veritable art gallery of Christmas Currier & Ives illustrations. And inside is another art gallery of great Christmas woodcut illustrations.

May these stories bring great joy to you and your loved ones this Christmas!

The theme of this year's introduction is "Serenity at Christmas." Ever since the very first collection, more and more readers have used these stories as a antidote for the increased secularization of the Christmas season.

Each evening, beginning with Thanksgiving, they bring out the Christmas in My Heart books, turn off the television and the computer, put another log on the fire, and light the candles. Then the whole family gathers round the hearth to share a story or two, the beloved old ones alternating with those in the new collection. Not even the telephone is permitted to intrude on this sacred time together.

All during the Advent and the Twelve Days of Christmas, these nightly stories continue, ending only with The Day of the Wise Men (or Epiphany) on January 6.

Wouldn't this be a different society--and a much more serene one--if all families observed the Christmas season in this way?

--Joe 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.