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The Long Christmas Dinner is presented by special arrangement with Concord Theatricals on behalf of Samuel French, Inc.

Thornton Wilder Bio

Thornton Wilder (1897-1975) is the only writer to win Pulitzer Prizes for both drama (Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth) and fiction (The Bridge of San Luis Rey). He collaborated with Alfred Hitchcock on Shadow of a Doubt, hiked the Alps with the heavyweight boxing champion Gene Tunney, received a bronze star for his service in World War II, and was credited with discovering Orson Welles. He was also a much-loved teacher, letter-writer (especially with Gertrude Stein), and public speaker--in four languages. Hello, Dolly! is based on his play The Matchmaker. Read more about his exciting life on www.ThorntonWilder.com

The Long Christmas Dinner Festival Description

PARTICIPANT NAME, together with The Wilder Estate, is launching a new holiday tradition—The Long Christmas Dinner Festival--and everyone is invited.

Stretching from Alaska to Florida, from California to Maine, and many places in between, the festival will feature more than 30 theaters, schools, and bookstores in 20 states who will share Wilder’s holiday masterpiece, the one-act play The Long Christmas Dinner, with their communities. In just 40 minutes of stage time, the play shows 90 years of a family’s history flying by. This innovative, moving, funny, profound drama helps us understand time, tradition, and our own families more clearly. 

PARTICIPANT NAME joins a lineup contains some of the country’s most acclaimed theaters, all of whom have a recent history with Wilder’s plays (The Public Theater, The Goodman Theater, Seattle Rep, Miami New Drama, Pasadena Playhouse, Rude Mechs) as well as high schools, independent bookstores, and colleges (including Vassar and Yale, where students collaborated to stage the play’s world premiere in 1931).

The Long Christmas Dinner Play Description

Before he penned Our Town, Thornton Wilder wrote this holiday masterpiece in which audiences, over 40 minutes, get to watch four generations of a family come and go, discovering which traditions endure, and leaving the theater seeing themselves and their own families more clearly. It was first produced November 25, 1931, not on Broadway but in a joint performance by the Yale Dramatic Association and the Vassar Philalethesis. The play, along with five of his other one-acts, was first published by Coward-McCann and Yale University Press as The Long Christmas Dinner and Other Plays in One Act. Most recently, it was published in November 2025 by HarperPerennial in the new collection of Wilder’s work, Our Town and the Cosmic One-Acts. Over the years, many artists have drawn inspiration from this little play with big ideas. Legendary director Tyrone Guthrie called it “the greatest play of our epoch.” Orson Welles admitted to drawing liberally from its premise to create the famous breakfast table scene in Citizen Kane, when the entire history of a marriage unfolds in clips over the same meal. In 1961, Wilder himself collaborated with composer Paul Hindemith to turn his play into an opera. Recent homages include The Long Christmas Ride Home by Paula Vogel, Dan LeFranc’s The Big Meal and Noah Haidle’s Birthday Candles.

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The Long Christmas Dinner Stage Reading Adapted Script

Press Links

The New York Times 12/25/25

Quotations

Tappan Wilder –

Jeremy McCarter –