Jérôme and his mother struggle to keep their dairy farm running. One morning, he heads for town to look for a job.
Jérôme then strikes up a friendship with "La Chignole", a boisterous tramp, and gets hired by the local mayor to assist another worker, Lucien, to decorate the town’s Christmas trees.
But it is not long before an unexpected and less pleasant aspect of his "mission" revealed when the City Hall applies anti-begging laws to "clean out" the town center of its homeless people and tramps during the Christmas period.