Holiday House offers endless visions of childhood happiness to enthrall its visitors and keep them long enough to steal their lives and indeed, their very souls. Faced with the lush extravagance of endless holidays, eternal summer afternoons, and daily gifts that meet their deepest desires, the enslaved children find it impossible to resist Mr. Hood’s many lures. Trapped in a prison of their own desires, they end their vastly shortened lives as victims of the House who are doomed to transform into mournful fish and live forever after in emptiness and misery. Throughout the course of their adventures, Harvey, Lulu, and Wendell learn that it is far better to live an ordinary life and endure its periodic dullness, than to pay the heavy spiritual price of indulging their every whim with no thought of the consequences.

At Holiday House, everything is designed to please and entertain its denizens, lulling them into a false sense of security. As the days flit past, each one represents a full turn of the seasons, and rather than having to wait for the various pleasures that each part of the year represents, the children get to have them all at once, experiencing the very best of each season within the space of a single day: springtime breezes, summer heat, the rustle of fall leaves, and the gentle snowfall of winter.