Overview
The Long Christmas Dinner – nine decades long – showcases the
lives of several generations of the Bayard family. Wilder breaks the
boundaries of time as we measure it, and invites us to partake of “one
long, happy Christmas dinner” – past, present and future. As generations
appear, have children, wither and depart, only the audience
appreciates what changes and what remains the same. “Every last twig is
wrapped around with ice. You almost never see that,” young Genevieve
marvels, not realizing that her mother made this observation years
earlier, or that her daughter-in-law will one day do the same.
Please note: The Long Christmas Dinneris available both in a single-play edition or in the six-play volume Wilder’s Classic One Acts, which also contains The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden, Pullman Car Hiawatha, Queens of France, Such Things Only Happen in Books and Love and How to Cure it.