Although many of Nora Roberts' novels feature Christmas scenes, her followers often turn to two of her early short stories, "Home for Christmas" (1986) and  "All I Want for Christmas" (1994) for their holiday reading. Both stories use the Christmas season to highlight their shared focus on the importance of family ties.

"Home for Christmas" finds former town bad boy Jason Law, now a famed reporter with a Pulitzer to his credit, returning to his New Hampshire home after ten years of assignments that took him all over the world. His first stop is at the home of Faith Kirkpatrick, the girl he had loved and left behind.

Faith, now a hard-working business owner, is the divorced mother of Clara,  a girl who wins Jason's heart as easily as her mother had done. But Faith, aware of her responsibility to her child, knows her renewed attraction to Jason cannot provide the stability Clara needs in her life.

In "All I Want for Christmas" six-year-old twins Zeke and Zach Taylor decide to ask Santa for a mother for Christmas. When they meet Nell Davis, their school's new music teacher, they decide she would be a perfect mom.

Mac Taylor, their father, is harder to convince. His faith in marriage had been shattered when his sons' mother had divorced him while the twins were still infants. Although he is attracted to Nell's warmth and exuberance, his past experience has caused him to doubt the existence of a "happily ever after" love.

"Home for Christmas" first appeared in the 1986 Silhouette Christmas Stories anthology. “All I Want for Christmas,” was published in the 1994 Jingle Bells, Wedding Bells anthology. Both stories were most recently republished in The Gift, an October 2007 Silhouette Special Release.