Brace Yourself for Storybook Christmas Dinner
YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, CALIF. — Each year before Christmas Yosemite’s crown jewel for holiday traditions, the Ahwahnee Dining Room, with a 34-foot-high beamed ceiling and large sugar pine trestles that complement the room’s granite pillars and floor-to-ceiling windows, resonates with music, laughter and 100 voices ringing out in holiday cheer. The return of the Bracebridge Dinner with its passionate cast, crew, and loyal fans, relives a tradition that began in 1927 when the hotel first opened. The inspiration for this yuletide ceremony that famed photographer Ansel Adams helped create and promote is Washington Irving’s Sketch Book which describes Squire Bracebridge and English Christmas traditions of the 18th century.
From Irving’s Old Christmas Sketch Book – The Christmas Dinner: “We were ushered into this banqueting scene with the sound of minstrelsy, the old harper being seated on a stool beside the fireplace, and twanging his instrument with a vast deal more power than melody. Never did Christmas board display a more goodly and gracious assemblage of countenances: those who were not handsome were, at least, happy; and happiness is a rare improver of your hard-favoured visage.”
BRACEBRIDGE DINNER: December 13-25, 2014
- 4 hour play about a Christmas Dinner. 100 cast member interaction with the audience includes Christmas carols and the 7-course meal delivery, staged to the story line.
- Held at Ahwahnee, a National Historic Landmark, in Yosemite National Park
- Cost is around $400
- Call (801) 559-4884 to purchase dinner-only tickets
- Menu in 2014 includes: Fresh & Smoked Rainbow Trout Mousse, Sonoma Duck Confit Strudel, Herb Roasted Angus Beef Tenderloin, Plum Pudding & Wassail, and Mignardise dessert.
