When the widow McDowell and her son Thomas knock at Jonathan Toomey's door one winter's day, they receive a frosty reception. For Jonathan keeps himself to himself - Mr Gloomy, the children call him.

What no one knows, though, is that once he was a happy man with a wife and baby and that it is grief at their deaths that has made him so hard and cold.

Would the carver make a set of nativity figures for Christmas, the widow asks, and could her son watch him work? When, albeit gruffly, Jonathan agrees to her requests, it is the beginning of a miracle that will see the warming of his sad, chill heart.