Trivia

According to star/producer Vince Vaughn, the film's message is that the point of Christmas is to get together with all the members of one's family, be they good, bad or ugly, to be thankful of their love, and of course to have fun.

Seth Gordon was hired as director at Vince Vaughn's insistence, Vaughn being a fan of Gordon's acclaimed documentary The King of Kong (2007).

The film started production during the 2007-2008 Writers Guild of America strike, which meant that there could be no changes made to the script during filming.

Howard's house was built from scratch in the Shadow Hills area of south California, with a reinforced roof that could stand the weight of the actors and the camera crew. Some of the crew were unaware of this and were surprised when they went into the house to find it completely empty, something which director Seth Gordon is very proud of.

Many of the film's key scenes were improvised.

Star/producer Vince Vaughn, actor/executive producer Peter Billingsley and actor Jon Favreau are all very good friends in real life and have collaborated on several other projects together, in different capacities.

Be it the screenwriters, the director or the stars, everyone contributed if only slightly to the film's story by sharing their own experiences.

In order to develop the characters and give each of them an identity, director Seth Gordon drew up detailed timelines of their lives.

All four actors portraying the parents are Oscar winners for acting. Robert Duvall (Tender Mercies (1983)), Sissy Spacek (Coal Miner's Daughter (1980)), Jon Voight (Coming Home (1978)), and Mary Steenburgen (Melvin and Howard (1980)).

Cast includes two Country-Western singers (Dwight Yoakam and Tim McGraw) and three people who have won Oscars for playing Country-Western singers (Reese Witherspoon in Walk the Line (2005), Robert Duvall in Tender Mercies (1983) and Sissy Spacek in Coal Miner's Daughter (1980))

During the filming of the dinner sequence, Reese Witherspoon was hit in the face with a ceramic plate. She required 5 stitches as a result of the injury, which delayed the shoot for 3 days.

According to director Seth Gordon, the film's subject is the difficulty all people have of reconciling who they are and the person they're supposed to be, which is why it's so hard to spend Christmas with one's family and why it can engender uneasiness. Naturally, he also felt Christmas was an amazing playground for comedy.

Seth Gordon inspired himself from memories of his own family Christmases, where the mood was tense, where his sister would always be after him and where no one would want to go get his grandmother for dinner, to approach the directing on this film.