When Jesper distinguishes himself as the Postal Academy's worst student, he is sent to Smeerensburg, a small village located on an icy island above the Arctic Circle, where grumpy inhabitants barely exchange words, let alone letters. Jesper is about to give up and abandon his duty as a postman when he meets local teacher Alva and Klaus, a mysterious carpenter who lives alone in a cabin full of handmade toys.

An irritable marketing executive, Neal Page, is heading home to Chicago for Thanksgiving when a number of delays force him to travel with a well meaning but overbearing shower ring curtain salesman, Del Griffith.

London, 1843. Ebenezer Scrooge, a bitter old man, despises the Christmas holiday. Over the course of Christmas Eve night he is visited by three ghosts to show him his past, present and future.