It's turning out to be a pretty rotten Christmas for the Saunders family. Having just moved to Edmonton, Alberta from Los Angeles, California, they have no friends, no money, and, with the exception of the bright-eyed Mary (Amy and Zoe Schlagel), no Christmas spirit. To make matters worse, their mother, Judy (Rachel Hayward), is stuck in Los Angeles, stranded by airline overbookings. So, the Christmas shopping duties fall on dad, Wayne (Patrick Swayze), and the gloomy kids. Things start looking a bit more like Christmas when twelve-year-old Brian (Matthew Knight) and six-year-old Mary find a satchel of money at the local mall and they launch a Yuletide shopping spree, that is, until the crooks who counterfeited the money chase them through the mall packed with holiday shoppers.