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.