The Christmas season is approaching. In South Woodbourne, Washington, widowed second grade schoolteacher Emily Spengler loves the Christmas holidays, as do all the townsfolk, and the traditions she had built with her now deceased husband, Frank, who passed away almost three years ago, and her now grown daughter, Heather. As usual, she is expecting Heather to come home for the holidays from Boston, where she is going to school. In Boston, Massachusetts, novelist and English professor Charles Johnson is an unsentimental man, who, like his workaholic brother Ray, owner of his own lucrative business, doesn't celebrate the season. Emily and Charles meet on a house swapping website as they decide to do a one week swap with each other in the lead up to Christmas. Emily wants to go to Boston to be with Heather, who has told her that she isn't planning on coming home for the holidays. And Charles is having problems meeting deadlines for his latest novel and needs somewhere quiet and out of the way to complete his writing. Their house swap doesn't end up being anything as they expected, first and foremost because of the Christmas spirit either missing or overwhelming the other's house. In Boston, Emily learns upon her arrival that Heather has left town with her boyfriend, Jason, Heather who seems to be trying to test her adult wings without Emily's influence. But Emily meets Ray, the two who slowly fall for each other. They will have to determine both their professional and personal futures past this week, and if the other person factors into that future. And in South Woodbourne, divorced corporate events planner Faith Kerrigan, Emily's best friend from San Francisco, shows up on Emily's doorstep planning on keeping Emily company during the holidays in Heather's absence. Out of circumstance, Faith is forced to stay at the house with Charles for the better part of the week. The question with the two is whether they will both survive each other's company for the week, as it is hate at first sight, that perception based largely on the negative way their most recent respective relationship ended.