Why are Friendsgivings outdoing the traditional Thanksgiving?
Are we going through a phase? Is friendsgiving being on top a shift that’s here to stay?
Photo by: Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 @priscilladupreez
I have three different theories that are centered around my personal life:
Millennials are over the effort needed to gather and all the fuss.
It only affects families that have experienced a divorce or separation of some sort
The city of Austin in Texas bred the friendsgiving culture into its residents and really stuck because we had a much better time with each other over getting stuck on highways and taking expensive flights from busy airports.
Let’s dive into each of them, shall we?
THEORY #1Millennials are over all the gathering and fuss.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I have a stressful job and stressful things (outside of my job) happen on occasion. I also try to consistently make an effort to see friends, see my boyfriend, see family throughout the year, go on personal trips and maintain my home and myself.
With all this on my plate, and oh— we can’t forget about the current state of the world, I’m always a whisper away from burnout at any given point in the year but there’s a special kind of burnout that happens at the end of each year that I experience that’s just a little bit more spicy than the rest. The last— and I mean, the last thing I want to think about when Thanksgiving rolls around is fighting holiday traffic or holiday flight delays because let’s be real, it was a shit show even before the pandemic happened.
Okay so, why am I calling out millennials then? Great question. In short: We’ve released ourselves from the shackles of forced gatherings for things when it doesn’t fill our cup.
I mean, that’s really it if you ask me. It’s like when you start living on your own for the first time, and you’re sitting down to a nice meal you Doordashed or prepared for yourself and you get about half way through and realize you’re not hungry anymore. So you…
…stop eating. You just stop eating.
And no one comes careening around the corner saying, “You need to finish every single thing on your plate!!”
You just grab some Tupperware for the rest and put it in the fridge and then realize, that you’re free.
Now, I may be over-dramatizing that but it’s truly a mini-awakening I had one night. I don’t need to finish everything that’s set out before me. Especially when I’m not the one who served myself. I live in Texas, and the portions down here, as I’m sure they are where you live in America too, are grossly large.
And wow, if you remove the context of food from the last paragraph we could be in a much different (but equally interesting) blog post!
We’ve released ourselves from the shackles of forced gatherings for things that don’t fill our cup.
Now I specified this by adding, “when it doesn’t fill our cup” because I usually LOVE the chances I get to reconnect with family to gather, share food, stories and make new memories. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that sometimes I need time alone and that timing conflicts. Or I realize that driving or flying somewhere and dealing with that travel stress would be bad stress and added anxiety instead of good stress. And I think that’s okay.
I know time is always fleeting and you never know when the next time is going to be the last time for this, that and the other— but I want to take that same energy and apply that to doing things that are acts of self-care for ourselves too.
One of my good friends the other day said to slow down now when you can opt to instead of when life forces you to slow down later on.
And that really stuck with me.
Photo by: Zoran Kokanovic @noonchaka
THEORY #2It only affects families that have been through a divorce or a separation.
Okay hang tight with me on this one. I’m feeling a little emo with this theory.
Holidays in divorced or separated households aren’t impossible, obviously, but it requires extra planning and thought. Instead of having one central place to go to (in my case, what I’m lacking is one “parent’s house” you may have 2-3 locations on the table for any given year and have to decide who you want to celebrate with.
As a child, that decision was made for me. No processing required, other than the emotional trauma, which I was NOT doing at the time, lololol. I would ask my mom where me and my little sister were going that year and then either packed a bag to go to my dad’s side of the family’s matriarchal home or to my mom’s.
Easy peasy, lemon-squeezy.
As a young adult, sometimes the question was flipped back on me.
“Well, where do you want to go this year?”, my mom would sometimes ask. I hated that question.
Like, full-on hate, I recognize it’s a strong word. But it’s valid here because there’s no way to answer that question without hurting someone’s feelings. What started out as a ‘this year here, this year there’ type deal went off its cadence a bit and then slowly the choice transferred from my parents to me and my sister. Which I appreciated in some ways? But it was still tough to deal with.
Now, as a full-blown 30-something, I have formed strong preferences on where I want to spend my time for the holidays. And sometimes, that number 1 spot isn’t with my family at all.
Holidays in divorced or separated households aren’t impossible, obviously, but it requires extra planning and thought.
Friendsgivings have grown on me for a few reasons, but I’ll get more into the bulk of those in the next theory. The one reason that ties here is that— ready for it?— I don’t have to decide which side of my family to spend Thanksgiving with.
And selfishly, that’s some of the biggest weight off my shoulders during this time of year. Beyond the decision, there’s usually 0 travel involved because all my friends are in town, at least the ones that I’d be planning a Friendsgiving with.
So it really feels like a no-brainer some years to make that call. Now, on the off-years where I’ve moved, had a shift in friend-groups, am really missing my family or what-have-you, a traditional Thanksgiving is usually welcomed and I’ll make the trek to one of the familia destinations. If that’s not the case though, you’ll often find me curling up on a friend’s couch, cozy food in mouth and hand with a drink on the table giggling over the things that have taken place this year. I don’t live in the same city as my family or see them often, so my friends and me have a lot of shared moments to reminisce about. My family isn’t hella toxic like I know some can be, but there’s also the escapism from toxic homes that some people have when they choose to celebrate with friends instead. I think @coolebgrooves on TikTok communicated this very well.
Now, on to my last theory.
THEORY #3Austin, Texas has propelled the uprising of friendsgiving by being a highly-populated city of transplants.
Photo by: Spencer Davis @spencerdavis
So I’m a Texas girly (but originally from the midwest) and I lived in Austin for 6 years before making the move to Houston for its diversity, better cost of living and overall better opportunities to run into amazing food and things to do.
Now, while I may have mixed feelings about Austin now, I used to absolutely love it as someone who was in their early 20s. It was buzzing, there were always interesting people to meet and things to do. I was still in my ‘going out a lot’ phase— living my best life, basically.
As I grew more familiar with the city and made friends over the years, I realized— and so did they— that it was very rare to actually come across someone who grew up in and was from the city of Austin, that was still living there. And everyone in my close friend group moved to Austin from other parts of Texas or the country. After the first year or so of the consistent friend group thing (because you know, that becomes more difficult of a task as you get older) everyone went their separate ways for Thanksgiving and Christmas and then reconvened for the new year. That didn’t last long though. Austin’s cost of living crept up each year and so did the cost of traveling back from whence we came. So one year, we decided to gather up the stragglers and outcasts and throw a Friendsgiving.
And let me tell you— that’s one of the best celebrations of Thanksgiving I’ve ever had.
We all got dressed up somewhat, somehow all arriving on the same page about that. Hugs were passed around along with drinks and finger foods and then we started cooking. It felt kind of odd at first. The host was kind of in charge, telling us what to do and make and cut when, but then the awkwardness of it all started to fade away and it felt like just another dinner party but we were all pitching in and listening to Christmas music and taking turns cozying up around the apartment.
There was no drama, no toxicity and no one snuck off for a few hours because they were overstimulated and anxious. We were just there, enjoying each other’s company for the day, spending time together cooking things for everyone to enjoy, and it turned into a little game night by the end of it all. There were moments where people stepped away to phone their family or parents, but no one really felt like they were missing out on anything, that gathering was enough.
So it became our tradition: stay in town and gather for Thanksgiving, go our separate ways for Christmas to spend time with family, then come back and party hearty for New Years.
It was perfect. And many others in town appeared to be doing the same thing, for the most part. One year it’d be as busy as if the holidays weren’t around, other years it’d be something of a ghost town with all the transplants of the city out of town. But our friend group always stuck to the plan— and they still are, they’re just down one Catchphrase player now.
xo
So, what say you? Are you team Friendsgiving or Traditional Family Thanksgiving?
