With no family and nowhere to go over the Christmas holidays in 1970, unpopular classics teacher Paul Hunham (Giamatti) is stuck at school to supervise Angus, a bright teenager whose bad behaviour always threatens to get him expelled. Joining Paul and Angus is head cook Mary (Oscar-winner Randolph) - an African American woman whose own son was recently lost in Vietnam. These three shipwrecked people form an unlikely Christmas family, sharing comic misadventures during two very snowy weeks in New England.
