A character study of a family on vacation. The emotional abyss and problems are behind the seemingly nice facade of an intact family as they experience guilt, love, and jealousy.
Eight very different couples deal with their love lives in various loosely interrelated tales all set during a frantic month before Christmas in London.
In 1843, despite the fact that Dickens is a successful writer, the failure of his latest book puts his career at a crossroads, until the moment when, struggling with inspiration and confronting reality with his childhood memories, a new character is born in the depths of his troubled mind; an old, lonely, embittered man, so vivid, so human, that a whole world grows around him, a story so inspiring that changed the meaning of Christmas forever.
Tobi and Achim, the pride of the local crew club, have been the best of friends for years and are convinced that nothing will ever stand in the way of their friendship. They look forward to the upcoming summer camp and the crew competition. Then the gay team from Berlin arrives and Tobi is totally confused. The evening before the races begin, the storm that breaks out is more than meteorological.
A young French teenage girl after moving to a new city falls in love with a boy and is thinking of having sex with him because her girlfriends have already done it.
After the death of his mother, a young boy calls a radio station in an attempt to set his father up on a date. Talking about his father’s loneliness soon leads to a meeting with a young female journalist, who has flown to Seattle to write a story about the boy and his father.
Young love and childish fears highlight a year in the life of a turn-of-the-century family up to the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair.
Various experiences of childhood are seen in several sequences that take place in the small town of Thiers, France. Vignettes include a boy's awakening interest in girls, couples double-dating at the movies, brothers giving their friend a haircut, a boy dealing with an abusive home life, a baby and a cat sitting by an open window, a child telling a dirty joke, and a boy who develops a crush on his friend's mother.
Three intertwined stories about Serbian truck driver who is involved into drug trafficking without knowing, Czech family who live by the road which makes them a lot of troubles since many cars crash into their house, and a bus full of Swedish grannies who go on a Trans-European package holiday.
Returning to his home town after the death of the grandfather who raised him, slick and cynical Wall Street trader Will Martin feels decidedly out of place, and not at all in tune with the Christmas preparations being made by the local citizenry. But Will isn't really taking a sentimental journey at all: He's merely in town to modernize and streamline his family's real-estate company. While going through his grandfather's effects, Will and his grandmother come across the old man's diary--which reveals a lengthy relationship with a woman named Lillian.
Frank Cross is a wildly successful television executive whose cold ambition and curmudgeonly nature has driven away the love of his life. But after firing a staff member on Christmas Eve, Frank is visited by a series of ghosts who give him a chance to re-evaluate his actions and right the wrongs of his past.
A retelling of the classic Dickens tale of Ebenezer Scrooge, miser extraordinaire. He is held accountable for his dastardly ways during night-time visitations by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future.
Six-year-old Susan Walker has doubts about childhood's most enduring miracle—Santa Claus. Her mother told her the secret about Santa a long time ago, but, after meeting a special department store Santa who's convinced he's the real thing, Susan is given the most precious gift of all—something to believe in.
Kurt and Lydia are planning a relaxed vacation at the Gripsholm castle in Sweden . What Lydia does not know is that for Kurt, a well-known publicist, the journey is actually a flight from encroaching fascism and a direct threat from the Nazis.
On Christmas Eve, three homeless people living on the streets of Tokyo discover a newborn baby among the trash and set out to find its parents.
Lovely Linda Mason has crooner Jim Hardy head over heels, but suave stepper Ted Hanover wants her for his new dance partner after fickle Lila Dixon gives him the brush. Jim's supper club, Holiday Inn, is the setting for the chase by Hanover and his manager.
Miser Ebenezer Scrooge is awakened on Christmas Eve by spirits who reveal to him his own miserable existence, what opportunities he wasted in his youth, his current cruelties, and the dire fate that awaits him if he does not change his ways. Scrooge is faced with his own story of growing bitterness and meanness, and must decide what his own future will hold: death or redemption.
George Bird is a salesman of agricultural machinery who finds out that he hasn't long to live. On his doctor's advice, he goes to an exclusive seaside resort to spend his savings on one last holiday.
A couple in a long-distance relationship reunite for a road trip through Sri Lanka. Things go awry.
Siblings Ethan and Hallie O'Fallon plot to get their divorced parents back together in time for Christmas.