Up for a promotion, Chicago-based designer, divorcee Danielle Prescott, is a workaholic in trying to eke out a better life for her adolescent son, Paul Prescott. For the first time in years, they are returning to her hometown of Holly Pines for Christmas – she regardless taking work with her – as in the intervening year her father Walter Prescott passed away, she not having had the opportunity to say her goodbyes to him last Christmas. As such, Danielle wants to hand down their family's Holly Pines Christmas traditions to Paul, including taking him to the town's Christmas Festival largely organized by her mother, Kate Prescott. Danielle is dismayed not only to learn that they will have do major fundraising just to hold Festival, but that what what Danielle considers its centerpiece, the miniature train ride, called the North Pole Express for which train enthusiast Walter always acted as conductor, long ceased to operate, no one even knowing what happened to the train itself. In discovering her father's electric toy trains which she wants to have operational for Christmas for Paul, Danielle reconnects with her high school acquaintance, Kevin Vaughn, the owner/operator of the town's hobby shop, he an all 'round fix-it guy. In connecting, they decide to try and locate the North Pole Express and if they can find it if it can be resurrected for the Festival. While they do locate the equipment, it will take what Kevin considers a Christmas miracle for it to be up and running for the Festival, especially as no one makes parts for it anymore. In the process, Danielle and Kevin start to fall for each other. Their path to a relationship faces many hurdles, not only of the outcome of the North Pole Express, but also Danielle's life in Chicago in this possible promotion, and Kevin's ex-girlfriend, Jackie, who operates the florist shop next to Kevin's shop, making it clear individually to both Kevin and Danielle that she wants to get back together with him. —Huggo