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...