The O’Brien and Rossi families continue to find love and laughter amidst chaos and calamities, a hilarious Christmas pageant, and a pair of unfairly wielded handcuffs.

Huntington Beach, California, 1979

Twelve-year-old Jesse O’Brien has had quite a year, but her mother, Annie, a full-time waitress and pie baker with five kids, has had a year that turned her life upside down, then shook it like a martini, and ran it through a whirling blender.

Despite what happened, Jesse knows that her mother is determined to have a merry Christmas with her family along with Tommy, a handsome and protective Vietnam War vet; his sister, Liliana, a singing mermaid; and his five kids, a happy band of rebels, who all live next door in an old, rambling house in the middle of an orange orchard.

To make the holidays extra special, the Rossi and O’Brien families have the annual Perry R. Joseph Elementary School Christmas Pageant to look forward to, though no one expected it to be quite so…unusual: Angels and hellfire tequila, a rockin’ Little Drummer Boy and talking lambs, Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer and Elvis Presley.

Unsurprisingly, the exuberant Rossi and O’Brien kids are right smack in the middle of it and the pageant will be filled with holiday joy…unless it’s an utter and complete disaster.

Jesse knew that her mother had one deeply held wish, that all her semi-wild children would behave appropriately on stage, sing nicely, do what they were told, and make her proud.

But Annie’s worry about how her children would behave in the Christmas pageant paled in comparison to the worry she felt when she was arrested one fine, sunny day for assault against, unbelievably, a pregnant-looking man – her soon to be ex-husband’s attorney. She had used her favorite red ceramic pie pan to protect herself and Jesse from him in their pretty yellow kitchen next to fresh baked apple pies, and now she’s stuck in handcuffs.

Jesse’s mother immediately had a second wish, a much deeper and more desperate wish than the one associated with the pageant.

And that was the kind of problem that only Mrs. Claus could fix.

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