This is one of the many really wonderfully "feel goo" Christmas movies. If you don't own it, you need to.

This is an enjoyable, warm and pleasant family film for anytime to view. The roles were done well. Ann jillian always gives a good performance & does in this role as a hometown veternarian who loves the community in which she lives. She is loved & respected by many. Along comes a widowed father of a young girl back to the neighborhood & his father's (Jack Palance)home as he has encountered some emotional obstacle to his professional ability in medicine. Ann Jillian helps them all to meet the problems ahead and thicken the plot so that the developing story brings high & low moments to a good resolution. How she does it is a good story. I had seen it on TV several times & can look at it again every so often.

A surgeon (Robert Hays) who has lost confidence in his ability and his daughter (Ashley Gorrell,) who has lost the feeling of joy in her life, go back to his home in St. Nicholas, Iowa, for the Christmas holidays and come face to face with their past and fears.
Jack Palance is wonderful as their father/grandfather. Ann Jillian as the mayor/former love interest of the surgeon gives a light to the film which is enchanting. A very pleasant holiday movie.

This movie took me by surprise. I thought, how can this be ok? Once I got into the movie, and began watching, I was hooked. We know how we want it to end, and finally it does!

There are several movies that have this same title, I'll Be home for Christmas and I want to point out that this isn't the theatrical movie with Jonathan Taylor Thomas from Home Improvement or the other TV movie version that starred Courtney Cox from Friends but it is the made for TV version that stars Robert Hays, Ann Jillian and Jack Palance and it is very good and is a Christmas movie/romance story and is about a surgeon played by Robert Hays who had lost his wife about 4 years earlier suddenly decing to go back with his daughter to his small town for Christmas and his father played by Jack Palance and the townspeople want him to stay and take over the hospital but the mayor who also happened to be his high school girlfriend and is played by Ann Jillian thinks everyone is wasting their efforts in trying to get him to stay so his father tries to bring them back together. I really liked this movie and I highly recommend the DVD for anyone who likes Christmas movies and romance books. I don't think this one was adapted from a romance book but it seems like it could have been. I strongly have to disagree with the previous reviewer! I didn't think the female in the love story was too fat at all and it's a good thing that she wasn't the typical too skinny Hollywood actress. 5 stars for this movie and for the actors!