Vanessa Hall is a New-York-based social worker working for a non-profit foster-child placement service, to pay it forward after having grown up in the foster-care system herself. She never knew her father and lost her mother at age 9 before she could ask her anything about him. As Christmas nears, she takes an ancestry test and not only learns her ethnic makeup but also that there is a positive paternity test in the company's system: her biological father is a Richard Hendricks, who lives an hour's drive away in Barrington, Connecticut with his wife Pauline and their three adolescent children, Caitlin, Aidan, and Emilia. After the two meet and talk, Richard invites her to come spend a few days with him and his family in Barrington to get to know them before she meets the extended family, who will descend on the house on Christmas Eve; she accepts. The only other person who has been invited for that extended stay at the same time is a family friend, New York corporate lawyer Kris, who would be able to give Vanessa a lift. Like Vanessa, Kris no longer has any biological family; his parents passed away when he was in college, and since then he has been spending holidays with the Hendricks, who have become his surrogate family, Richard having been Kris' father's best friend. After initiation apprehensions on both sides, Vanessa and the Hendricks make an emotional connection, but it's threatened by the different experiences Vanessa and Richard had with Vanessa's mother, and unanswered questions might in turn threaten the burgeoning romantic connection between Vanessa and Kris.