A city-bred grandson moves to his grandparents' farm during the Great Depression and grows up enough under their tough care to help his grandfather deliver a surprise gift on Christmas Eve to their community church with the help of a phantom stranger.

A widowed father struggles to hold together his family of three teenagers, one of whom is intellectually challenged and enrolled in a state school for "special" children where he finds fulfillment in his love of sports, emulating his older, athletic brother.