The story starts in a forest called Holiday Woods with seven trees containing doors leading to towns representing various holidays: Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Halloween and the Fourth of July. Halloween Town is a fantasy world filled with citizens such as deformed monsters, ghosts, ghouls, goblins, vampires, werewolves and witches. Jack Skellington, a skeleton known as The Pumpkin King, leads them in organizing the annual Halloween holiday. However, in a monologue, Jack reveals he has grown weary of the same routine year after year, and wants something more. Wandering dejectedly in the woods, he stumbles across the seven holiday doors and accidentally opens a portal to Christmas Town, whose residents are charged with organizing the annual Christmas holiday. Impressed by the bright and cheery feeling and style of Christmas, Jack presents his findings and his understanding of Christmas, to the Halloween Town residents. However, they fail to grasp his meaning and compare everything to their ideas of Halloween, although there is one Christmas character they can relate to: the fearsome lobster-like king of Christmas Town who flies at night, named "Sandy Claws". Meanwhile, Jack who barely understands Christmas himself, obsessively tries to study the holiday but fails to grasp any further meaning of it. He ultimately decides that since he cannot understand it, he should improve it, and announces that the citizens of Halloween Town will take over Christmas this year.
Mia Sullivan (Monica Calhoun), wife of Lance Sullivan (Morris Chestnut), has written letters requesting the old gang join them for Christmas: Harper Stewart (Taye Diggs) and his almost-nine-month-pregnant wife Robyn (Sanaa Lathan), Julian Murch (Harold Perrineau) and wife Candace Sparks (Regina Hall), her best friend Jordan Armstrong (Nia Long) and boyfriend Brian McDonald (Eddie Cibrian), Quentin "Q" Spivey (Terrence Howard), and Shelby Taylor (Melissa De Sousa). All the friends arrive at the house, the first time they've come together in 14 years, and the celebration begins. At dinner, the old friends catch up while tensions grow between Shelby and Candace.
With Christmas only a few weeks away, Chicago resident Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) decides it is time to get a Christmas tree. He gathers his wife Ellen (Beverly D'Angelo), daughter Audrey (Juliette Lewis) and son Rusty (Johnny Galecki) and drives out to the country where he picks out a huge tree. Realizing too late that they didn't bring any tools to cut the tree down, they are forced to uproot it instead.
In Portugal, James Bond – agent 007, sometimes referred to simply as '007' – saves a woman on the beach from committing suicide by drowning, and later meets her again in a casino. The woman, Contessa Teresa "Tracy" di Vicenzo, invites Bond to her hotel room to thank him. The next morning, Bond is kidnapped by several men while leaving the hotel, who take him to meet Marc-Ange Draco, the head of the European crime syndicate Unione Corse. Draco reveals that Tracy is his only daughter and tells Bond of her troubled past, offering Bond a personal dowry of one million pounds if he will marry her. Bond refuses, but agrees to continue romancing Tracy under the agreement that Draco reveals the whereabouts of Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the head of SPECTRE.
Teenagers Sherlock Holmes (Nicholas Rowe) and John Watson (Alan Cox) meet and become good friends as students at London's less-than-prestigious Brompton Academy. Watson is introduced to Holmes’ mentor, Rupert T. Waxflatter (Nigel Stock), a retired schoolmaster and inventor. Waxflatter's niece Elizabeth Hardy (Sophie Ward) is also Holmes’ close friend and love interest. Holmes is generally recognized as brilliant but considered an undisciplined troublemaker by most of the school administration. He is closest to Professor Rathe (Anthony Higgins), his fencing instructor, who warns Holmes that he is too emotional and impulsive.
The plot is centered around Krampus, a beast-like demon who is the opposite of Santa Claus in Germanic Christian folklore. During Christmas time, Krampus searches and finds people and punishes them for their misdeeds.
Frank Cross (Bill Murray) is a successful but cynical television programming executive for the IBC network headquartered in New York City. He has demanded the network put on a extravagant live production of A Christmas Carol on Christmas Eve to seize the ratings opportunity, forcing the network's staff including his direct assistant Grace Cooley (Alfre Woodard) to work on the holiday. When some of his decisions are questioned, he fires timid yes-man Eliot Loudermilk (Bobcat Goldthwait) on the spot. Frank's boss Preston Rhinelander (Robert Mitchum) takes the liberty of hiring an assistant for Frank, Brice Cummings (John Glover), who is transparently after Frank's job. Hours before the show is set to start, Frank is alone in his office when he is visited by the ghost of his mentor Lew Hayward (John Forsythe), who warns him of the errors of his ways and that three ghosts will visit him over the course of the night. Before he leaves, Lew causes Frank's phone to call Claire Phillips (Karen Allen), Frank's true love who he had foregone when he became a television executive. Claire comes to visit Frank, but finds him too busy with preparations for the show, though leaves him the address of the homeless shelter that she helps out at.
À Londres, vit Clara Stahlbaum et sa famille, dont la mère vient de décéder. La veille de Noël, les enfants Stahlbaum reçoivent de leur père un cadeau de la part de leur mère. Clara hérite d'une petite boite en forme d'œuf avec une serrure mais sans la clé. Mais malgré les compétences de la jeune fille pour les inventions, impossible pour Clara de trouver un moyen de l'ouvrir sans.
In Atlanta, Georgia Mabel "Madea" Simmons (Tyler Perry) has been talked into getting a job at a local store as customer service by her great-niece Eileen Murphy (Anna Maria Horsford). Madea quickly gets fed up with the customers and starts speaking rudely to them, causing herself to get fired on her first day. Madea then asks for her paycheck, but her boss tells her they will mail it to her. Infuriated, Madea steals a dress and some money from the cash register, then exits shortly after.
An elderly woman tells her granddaughter a bedtime story of where snow comes from, by telling her the story of a young man named Edward who has scissors for hands. As the creation of an old Inventor, Edward was a human-like boy who had everything except for hands. The Inventor suffered a fatal heart attack and died before he could give real hands to Edward.
Fourteen years prior, Ethan's (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) parents passed away on Christmas Eve. His two best friends, Isaac (Seth Rogen) and Chris (Anthony Mackie), have been with him in support on this night by having an annual tradition of going out on Christmas Eve. However, because Isaac is going to be a father and Chris has become famous, all three decide to have one last Christmas Eve out in New York City.
In 1995, Chris Brander (Ryan Reynolds) is an obese, curly-haired high school student with a lisp, braces, and a "gentle giant" demeanor. He attends the graduation party of his best friend, Jamie Palamino (Amy Smart), whom he secretly has a huge romantic crush on. He plans to confess his feelings by writing them in Jamie's yearbook. When Chris tries to return Jamie's yearbook, it is taken by her despicable ex-boyfriend, Tim (Ty Olsson). Chris is publicly humiliated when Tim reads his (Chris) confession aloud to the party but is further demoralized when Jamie doesn't reciprocate his intense and close romantic feelings and affections. After they share a kiss, Tim and the class burst out and humiliate Chris again. Embarrassed, Chris leaves on his bicycle tearfully and vows to leave town and never return in order to achieve greater success than his classmates.
Local eye doctor and Christmas expert Steve Finch (Matthew Broderick) wants his kids to have a great Christmas, packed with Steve's tried and true traditions, such as using an advent calendar, taking Christmas card pictures in matching sweaters, and getting a large tree. At night, he hears noises. He looks out his window and sees a moving truck. He and his wife Kelly (Kristin Davis) immediately know that "the new neighbors are moving in." In the morning, when Steve goes to get his paper, he is startled to see someone on his doorstep, stealing the paper, which causes him to spill coffee on himself. The stranger is his new neighbor Buddy Hall (Danny DeVito), a car salesman. Steve and Kelly also meet Buddy's wife Tia (Kristin Chenoweth).