Sensing that their relationship is crumbling, Christian avoids celebrating Christmas with his girlfriend Julia and heads for Paris. Alone in their Berlin flat, Julia decides that this is the time to drop her lover Frank, so she invites him to dinner. Deciding between the two men grows harder as Frank keeps impressing Julia with his wit and sex appeal, while Christian annoys her with a series of desperate calls from his refuge.
Luise wants to celebrate a traditional family Christmas this year instead of going on a skiing holiday with her husband Gideon and their two daughters like in the past few years; she's motivated by a text that one of her pupils, Franz, wrote in class. She invites him to join her in her traditional celebration because he doesn't have a big family. But the relatives come bringing all kinds of trouble, beginning with Luise's egotistical mother Ruth.
In 1924, Oskar Matzerath is born in the Free City of Danzig. At age three, he falls down a flight of stairs and stops growing. In 1939, World War II breaks out.
