A con artist who can't fathom the idea of an honest day's work, Tom Turner has tried every scam in the book. Then, while trying to pay off a gambling debt, he gets arrested attempting to sell tickets on an airline that hasn't flown since the '80s! Sentenced by a judge to get a job or go to jail, Tom reluctantly chooses to serve one year in one of the country's toughest institutions: the United States Post Office. As fate would have it, with the busy holiday season approaching, he is assigned to the Dead Letter Office. When first introduced to his new colleagues, a group of clock-watching, misfit co-workers, Tom begins to believe he might have met a better class of people in jail. Ever the charlatan, he inadvertently uses the unanswerable mail in a con of divine proportions. But Tom's holiday scam will transform him unknowingly into a very reluctant Samaritan, inspiring his postal partisans into a frenzy of goodwill and launching a Yule tidal wave that becomes the event of the season.