The Christmas Stories is a collection of ten stories written and read aloud by the author to the congregation of St Stephen Lutheran Church in White Bear Lake, Minnesota at Christmas time. The stories are based on the author's own personal Christmas memories and imagination, as well as stories he has gathered from others. Each story highlights a particular defining aspect of Christmas, such as the joy of going home at Christmas, or the magical wonder that is felt on Christmas Eve, or the agony children experience waiting for Santa Claus to arrive. In addition to celebrating the traditions of the season, the stories are intended for personal reflection, evoking in the readers their own memories. The stories are illustrated by the author's pen-and-ink drawings.

We all remember how old we were and how it was that Santa's real identity was revealed to us. And we have memories of family, gifts, friends, church programs, and homeward travels that have become the stories we tell over and over and intend to pass down to our children and their children. These are the subjects of The Christmas Stories.

The author has been asked which of the stories are true. His answer is there is truth in all of them. Not facts per se, the stories focus on human truths that we never question. For example, we know that every year we go home for Christmas, even if it's just a journey of the heart. And children agonize having to wait one slow day at a time for Christmas to arrive, while adults embrace the wait and even give it a name-advent-and celebrate it as a separate event of its own. And the peace of Christmas is more meaningful to those in uniform whose job is to preserve it, in part because they alone know what a high price it extracts. These are the truths that become the subjects of the stories of The Christmas Stories.


Ted Field is a full-time civil engineer and a part-time writer. He enjoys singing on Sundays in the senior choir at St Stephen Lutheran Church in White Bear Lake, Minnesota, which has given him the opportunity to write the Christmas stories in this collection. Every year as part of the choir's Christmas service he reads the stories aloud to the St Stephen congregation.

Ted is the author of The Well: An Enviro-Thriller, a mystery novel about a plot to contaminate the water supply of a small town, and is currently working on his next book, An Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times, a personal remembrance of growing up as a baby boomer. As the principal artist of Have Pen Will Draw, he creates cartoons, watercolors, and handmade greeting cards. He lives in Minnesota with his wife and two children.