Nick a motel owner who has lost faith in more than just the humanity of mankind is visited by a kindly stranger on Christmas Eve The motels guests are only concerned for themselves until a poor man and his wife drive up to the motel unable to go any further Out of rooms Nicks wife prepares a place for them in a shed under a neon star Nick had just finished hanging Their plight brings out the generosity in everyone including Nick who remembers another family almost two thousand years earlier that also found a makeshift room at an inn under another kind of star