Monty's Christmas

Christmas has brought Whit's daughter Jana and her children, Monty and Jenny, to Odyssey for the holidays, and the whole family is decorating the tree. Jana lingers over the old ornaments, including a Christmas ball she painted as a girl and signed "Bump," the nickname she earned by bumping into things. The warm mood cracks when the family's glass angel falls from the nativity stable while Monty is handling it and shatters. Jana scolds him, and though she apologizes, Monty only grows more withdrawn. When he asks to go to his room instead of decorating, the exchange flares into a quarrel, and Jana tells her father she will not let Monty grow up to be like his father - silent, sullen, always off in another room.

Whit tries next, offering Monty a look at the rebuilt Imagination Station, programmed to visit the very first Christmas in Bethlehem, but Monty only wants to take a walk. Whit confesses his frustration to Connie: "I can talk to kids all over Odyssey but I can't get through to my own grandson." Meanwhile Jana takes a phone call from Phil, her ex-husband, and argues with him about Christmas presents that will not arrive on time. Monty begs to talk to his dad, but Jana hangs up, and the fight that follows is the worst yet. She reminds Monty that his father is the one who walked out; he shoots back that if she had given him the choice, he might have gone to live with him. Then he storms out, trampling Jenny's "snow friend" on the way.

While Jana and Whit talk it over - and Whit gently wonders aloud whether Monty simply misses his dad - Connie finds Monty staring at the fountain in the Odyssey Mall. She asks his advice on a gift for her own father, who lives in California and whom she mostly reaches through an answering machine, since her parents are divorced too. Shopping turns into the conversation Monty has needed. He admits he misses his dad a lot, even though his mom says it does not make sense, and Connie tells him what she once figured out about her own mother: "She was just mad at Dad and taking it out on me." When his mom screams at him over little things, she may really be screaming at his dad for leaving, and what she needs most is for Monty to love her and try to understand her, even when she does not understand herself.

Back at the house, Jana admits to Whit that she has made a mess of things. Then Jenny reports hooligans in the front yard, rebuilding her snow friend or possibly staging a snowball battle - it is Monty and Connie. Monty tells his mother he is sorry for what he said, and Jana apologizes for yelling, today and over the past three years. They agree to talk from now on, not yell, and Monty gives her an early Christmas present: a small glass angel. Hugs give way to flying snowballs, and Whit chases the whole crew away from the door, hollering that there will be no snowball fights in the house.