Yosemite’s Famous Holiday Dinner : The Christmas meal at the Hotel Ahwahnee is so popular, a lottery selects those who may buy tickets.

“We won the lottery,” we said when friends asked what we were doing for Christmas. “You what!?” “No, not that lottery. We won the lottery for the Bracebridge Dinner at Yosemite,” we said.

That entitled us to spend $185 a person for a dinner that had to be paid for six months in advance. When we explained, our friends decided we were nuts. But this was no ordinary repast.

The Bracebridge Dinner at Yosemite National Park is a California tradition. It’s part feast, part pageant, with some of the charm and rough edges of a school play.

It all started in 1927, when the Hotel Ahwahnee opened in Yosemite, and park officials envisioned a Christmas celebration befitting the grand style of the new building.

Photographer Ansel Adams was one of the early planners who helped create the concept of a multi-course meal accompanied by music and pageantry.

The annual dinner became so popular that the park instituted a lottery in 1977 to keep ticket distribution fair. Each year as many as 60,000 people apply for a total of 1,675 spaces at five dinners: two on Dec. 22, one on Christmas Eve and two on Christmas Day. Last year, we were among the chosen for the Christmas Day event.

We arrived in Yosemite a few days before Christmas to find the valley free of snow and the weather cold and clear. The golds and reds of fallen oak leaves added color to the trails. Even though all the rooms in the valley are usually booked during the December holidays, we still found Yosemite to be quiet and unhurried.

From our Ahwahnee lodgings, we spent days exploring the valley floor. Free park shuttles run all year, and we parked our car and used the shuttles to reach points of interest such as Yosemite Village and the Ansel Adams Gallery. We also rode the shuttles to trail heads for hiking. Although there was no snow, we could see frost clinging to the high cliffs around the falls, forming white frames for the wispy water that drifted down from nearly frozen streams in the high country. One morning we saw deer exhaling frosty air, as they sniffed the breeze for unfamiliar scents. And in one meadow we glimpsed a tiny bird that was the brightest blue we’d ever seen.

On Christmas Day, we joined about 300 other lottery winners in the great lounge of the Ahwahnee Hotel. Most of the women were dressed in festive holiday evening wear. A few of the men wore tuxedos. A fire roared in the huge fireplace at one end of the hall, and waiters served hot cider. Several of us gathered around the piano and started singing Christmas carols.

Promptly at 8:30 p.m., costumed trumpeters appeared on the balcony and blew their horns, calling us in to dine. We filed into the grand Ahwahnee dining room, which had been transformed into an 18th-Century English nobleman’s hall. The Bracebridge Dinner is loosely based on a story from Washington Irving’s “Sketch Book” that describes a Christmas celebration at an imaginary English manor house called Bracebridge Hall.

A rainbow of banners hung from the beams, which vault 34 feet into the air, and along the walls were rounds of stained glass depicting legends from English folklore. At one dinner, early on in the event, Ansel Adams, who was dressed as a court jester, climbed a stone pillar at the front of the room. The festivities on our night were somewhat tamer.

We all stood at our tables while a local man dressed as the fictional Squire Bracebridge entered the hall, accompanied by singing and leading a procession down the center of the room. He and his group of half a dozen fictional family members and friends took their places at a raised table. Although Irving’s story is set in 1718, Bracebridge and company were dressed in medieval garb.

“The guests would costume themselves in attire that spanned the centuries,” a program note explained, and throughout the evening, various periods of dress were blithely mixed. The music, too, ranged from old English madrigals to modern Christmas carols, but no one seemed to mind the poetic license.

Each course was announced with music and arrived by procession down the center aisle, with costumed pages toting large papier-mache sculptures representing the featured dishes. A dour-looking fish heralded a course of English sole and salmon.

We found the food surprisingly good, considering the number and crush of patrons.

Oyster bisque was smooth and rich. The “peacock pie” was actually squab that had been braised with truffles and cooked with wild mushrooms.

For the meat course, a huge faux boar’s head was ushered in, along with a figure representing “Sir Loin of Beef.” What appeared on our plates was nicely roasted beef in an intensely flavored gravy. It was served with onions caramelized to sweetness.

Throughout the evening, members of the William Fulton Chorale from San Francisco entertained with songs, carols and madrigals. A minstrel, a young woman with mandolin, strolled by singing melodies, but the most poignant moment was when pageant director Andrea Fulton stood alone and sang a simple but moving, “O Holy Night.”

We left Yosemite thinking that the Bracebridge Dinner was one of those “once is enough” experiences. But as Christmas approaches this year, we find ourselves thinking about the hearty aroma of peacock pie, the sound of carols in the Ahwahnee’s great lounge, and the sight of that tiny bluebird in Yosemite Valley. Now how does that lottery work again?

GUIDEBOOK: Bracebridge Dinner Lottery

Applications for the 1993 Bracebridge Dinner lottery are accepted between Dec. 15 and Jan. 15. Each dinner seat costs $185, including tax and gratuity, not including wine. To enter, write for an application form to: Yosemite Park and Curry Company, 5410 E. Home Ave., Fresno, Calif. 93727. Or call (209) 252-4848.

Accommodations at Yosemite National Park range from about $50 a night at Yosemite Lodge to about $200 a night at the Hotel Ahwahnee. For reservations, call (209) 252-4848.

Although Bracebridge is pricey, Yosemite has some affordable places to eat in addition to the Ahwahnee dining room, which tends to be expensive. The cafeteria in Yosemite Lodge is pleasant, with affordable, hearty food. Last year a holiday turkey dinner was under $10. The Mountain Room Broiler in Yosemite Lodge serves dinners of steak and fish for under $25 per person and offers a view of Yosemite Falls.