"The Real Housewives of New Jersey" returned this week after a holiday sabbatical. The show follows Caroline Manzo and Jacqueline Laurita from Franklin Lakes, Kathy Wakile from Wayne, and Teresa Giudice and Melissa Gorga from Montville Township.

It is Christmastime in New Jersey, and all five families are preparing. While Laurita and her daughter Ashley Holmes make paper chains with Laurita’s parents, Laurita tells them that she has invited both the Giudices and Gorgas to her Christmas cocktail party.

“Reuniting the Giudices and the Gorgas; it could be a beautiful thing. Or it could be a disaster,” Laurita says.

Holmes tells her that she should not get involved with other people’s drama, citing Laurita’s former friendship with ex-housewife Danielle Staub.

“Ashley’s telling me to stay out of drama? That’s a little hypocritical given the drama she’s put Chris and me through the past few years?” Laurita says.

Meanwhile, the Manzo boys, Chris and Albert, have returned to Franklin Lakes with their roommate Greg to help their family to decorate. Tensions are high during the process, with Lauren Manzo clearly upset that her brothers have moved out.

“She’s in bitch mode; stay out of her way,” Caroline says.

Lauren admits it, saying she feels as though they have stopped trying to include her and have instead become “all buddy buddy” with Greg, who she used to have a friendship as well.

Later, at the Gorgas’ house in Montville, Melissa is preparing to sing for her lawyer, James Leonard, Mida Leacock, a marketing specialist, and K-Mack and Corte Ellis, two music producers. She sings the song she co-wrote with Anthony Bitar for them, and they are very impressed. They tell her she has a long way to go, potentially spending fifteen hours a day in the studio.

“Working fifteen hours a day in a studio; that bothers me,” Joe Gorga says. “She’s the mother of three children. I want her home with her kids.”

Instead, Gorga offers to build his wife a studio in the basement of their house. He takes the producers downstairs to show them the space he has in mind, which they say would work fine.

“Thank you, Jesus,” Melissa says in what has become her catchphrase.

At the Giudice house in Towaco, Joe Giudice is preparing dinner for Teresa while she gets dressed for him. He has set up a “living room picnic” for her in front of the fire.

“It’s been a tough year for Joe and I,” Teresa says, referencing their bankruptcy and their legal troubles with Joe’s ex-partner, who is suing them. “Some marriages don’t make it through what we’ve been through.”

Joe agrees.

“Even after all the bullcrap that’s been going on, I figured we’d be stressed out, hating each other, nothing,” he says.

Kathy Wakile and her husband Rich have begun searching for restaurants, and they go to look at another place.

“Opening a restaurant is a huge risk and it’s very expensive, but when you don’t dream, you don’t live,” Wakile says.

She and Rich really like the facility, but are still unclear on whether they are ready to make the commitment.

“I’m skeptical, but it’s exciting,” Wakile says.

“My idea was for us to get a great staff and my wife and I would oversee the restaurant. It may be ambitious and it’s very expensive. What the (expletive), I’ll go bankrupt like everyone else,” Rich says.

Back at the Gorgas’, Melissa’s three-year-old son Gino tells her he cannot feed himself.

“Mommy can’t baby you forever, or else you’ll be like Daddy when you get married,” she says.

She and Gino go down to see Joe’s progress on the studio in the basement.

“OK you’re building me a studio in the house but are you actually going to let me sing in the studio? He’s a typical Italian man who gets jealous and it’s like hey, hello! There’s a lot to be jealous of!” she says.

Jacqueline Laurita and Lauren Manzo go to visit Albie and Chris Manzo at their apartment in Hoboken. While there, Lauren looks sad, and starts to explain to them how she is feeling left out of the relationship. When she begins to cry, Albie gets very upset and goes to his room.

“I want you to be able, you know, to feel comfortable coming whenever you want, announced or unannounced, so why don’t you take this?” he says, offering her a key.

Chris interjects, saying “Announced or unannounced is fine, but I suggest announced.”

Later, Laurita visits Kim “G,” a controversial character who has befriended and defriended many of the New Jersey housewives in the past. When Kim attempts to tell Jacqueline details of Teresa’s court trial with Joe’s ex-partner, Jacqueline shouts at her to shut up.

At the Brownstone in West Orange, Kathy and Rich Wakile go to meet with owner Albert Manzo, Caroline’s husband. Kathy tells him of Rich’s idea to open their own restaurant and Manzo laughs in their face.

“You will not have the kind of life you have now together if you go into the restaurant business,” he says, shattering Rich’s idea that he will be able to casually supervise a staff.

The night of the Lauritas’ Christmas cocktail party arrives, and Jacqueline is grateful that she has hired a caterer so that she can “oversee her guests.” The Giudices are tired after a long day at court, during which Teresa got into a shouting match with Monica Chacon, Joe’s ex-partner’s lawyer’s wife, who Giudice was upset is friends with Kim “G.”

The tension eases somewhat as the night goes on, however, with the Manzos and Lauritas socializing with the Gorgas for the first time.

“Melissa and Joe, damn,” Caroline says. “Clearly younger generation, sexy; they just crack me up.”

The Manzo boys have a terrific time joking around with Gorga. When Melissa warns them that he will take any dare they give him, they begin to scheme. It is Joe Giudice, however, who dares him to switch outfits with Jacqueline, which he does.

There is some scattered tension throughout the night between the Gorgas and Giudices, like the recent Giudice-Manzo-Laurita trip to the Catskills. Caroline assures them that next time they will be invited.

“Teresa and Joe are fun, Melissa and Teresa’s brother are a lot of fun, so I can only imagine all together we’d have a lot of fun,” Laurita says.

Gorga invites all of them to join her that Saturday at her Christmas party. They all agree to attend, but next week’s previews show that all may not remain calm between the Giudice and Gorga families.

The show airs Sundays at 10 p.m. on Bravo.