Seven adult siblings from a working-class, Irish-American family must deal with their estranged father's desire to return home for Christmas for the first time since he walked out on the family 20 years earlier. Family rifts emerge: the four oldest siblings were fully grown when the patriarch Big Jim (Ed Lauter) left, while the younger children never had a relationship with their father, and still feel the effects of his exit. Like with any family, Christmas brings a mixed bag of complicated family dynamics. Alliances form, old wounds are reopened or glossed over, and the possibility for a new hope and forgiveness emerges.