On Christmas eve, the school children are sent home early by Miss Beadle, unaware that a massive blizzard is about to happen and become caught up while walking home, forcing the organization of a search party to find the children before it is too late.
Tropes present in this episode:
- Bittersweet Ending: All the missing kids are rescued in time, but Ted McGinnis, father to one of the first kids to be found, dies in the blizzard while searching for his son, unaware that he'd already been found, leaving a widow Lottie (to whom he'd planned on making a Christmas surprise) and orphaned son. And poor Miss Beadle will have to live with the fact that her decision to send the kids home early indirectly led to his death.
- Christmas Episode: Although not focused so much on the holiday itself; the episode is merely set on December 24, the final day before Christmas break. The drama focuses on frightened parents putting together a makeshift search operation to return their children to school, as an approaching blizzard has developed faster than expected.
- Contrived Coincidence: Miss Beadle dismisses class early but asks Nellie and Willie to stay behind and help her clean up since they live just a minute's walk from the school. If they had gone straight home, the local mothers (who are spending the afternoon with Mrs. Oleson at her house and have noticed that it's snowing) would have realized that their own children were also headed home, no longer at the school with their teacher as presumed.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Mr. Edwards returns with his younger children Carl and Alicia by the morning, proudly explaining that Carl was able to make an ice house good enough to keep himself and his little sister safe until their father found them.
- Paste Eater: Commenting that it's been a recurring issue, Miss Beadle disciplines Willie when she catches him eating paste during an arts and crafts project at school.
- Snowed-In: Once everyone is at the church, most of the rural townsfolk are stranded there until the weather clears.
- What You Are in the Dark: The Olesons, for of all their faults, show their true colors during this crisis. Harriet suggests that Mr. Edwards get a warmer coat when he organizes the search and collaborates with the ladies to receive and nurse the rescued children to health without a second thought, Nels (already a Nice Guy) joins the search party even though neither of his children is lost in the blizzard, Nellie is shown to be as crestfallen as everyone else at the chance that some of her classmates might not return and Willie comforts a guilt-ridden Miss Beadle, reassuring her that none of that was her fault.
- Written-In Absence: The writers employed significant contortions to establish and justify Reverend Alden not being present for church on Christmas, apparently so that Michael Landon could be the one to give the tearjerker scripture reading in the final scene.
