8 ms·

Friendsgiving, a new tradition to be thankful for

58 points by lmg643 12y ago

notduncansmith 12y ago
We're doing our first Friendsgiving this year, tomorrow actually. Still plan on seeing the folks on Thanksgiving Day, but it's excuse to have a party and hang out with the people that are close to us. Should be fun :)
xj9 12y ago
I'm glad we've re-appropriated this holiday to celebrate friendship. My friends are just as big a part of me as my own family.
judk 12y ago
Not very new (at least a decade old) but it's a good thing to publicize.
moonka 12y ago
I think these type of things are going to continue to grow. As people become more mobile and move around the country, to get together for holidays they have to travel. And travel has become increasingly painful, especially around holidays. Between the TSA, flight delays, and uncomfortable seats, I've cut down on my air travel quite a bit.
_RPM 12y ago
It must be nice having friends. I don't have friends in the sense that I do things together socially with them. I have acquaintances.
- notduncansmith 12y ago
  I know the feeling. The only friends of mine that I'd choose to spend time with outside of work... I know from work.
  - jacalata 12y ago
    So...have you tried asking them if they want to do something outside work?
    - notduncansmith 12y ago
      Yes, we do stuff outside work somewhat often. Sorry, that comment was poorly-worded.
- bequanna 12y ago
  I'm not trying to be a jerk, but how many friends you do or don't have is entirely up to you. I'm an introvert and it is tough meeting people. I'm not saying it is easy to move out of your comfort zone, but it is necessary. If you want to be more social and have more friends, then make conscious effort be more social and make more friends.
  - fixedd 12y ago
    ... says the non-married person who doesn't have full-time kids.
    - im2w1l 12y ago
      Become friends with your kids' friends' parents.
    - bequanna 12y ago
      For the record, I am happily married with no kids. Just to be clear, both of those things are choices one makes, not excuses to be made.
      - fixedd 12y ago
        I don't know why I was being quite so aggressive when I wrote that. I'm sorry... I think I was taking frustration out on you when you had nothing to do with it. I still disagree with the assertion that "how many friends you do or don't have is entirely up to you". It may be true in some extremely narrow sense, but if it came down to it how many people would give up the spouse they love because they were the problem, or their children because they were, or drop everything and move to where people were more similar to themselves?
  - Dewie 12y ago
    > I'm not trying to be a jerk, but how many friends you do or don't have is entirely up to you. Right, because someone with no friends probably have never thought or believed that it is their own fault for being shy/uninteresting/boring (and that they're shy/uninteresting/boring in part because ... they have no friends). It has probably never crossed their mind at all. > I'm an introvert and it is tough meeting people. I'm not saying it is easy to move out of your comfort zone, but it is necessary. If you want to be more social and have more friends, then make conscious effort be more social and make more friends. In order to be social, you need to try to be social. Right.
- makmanalp 12y ago
  I've thought a lot about friendships in general, and I don't have time to write all that, but I think it boils down to these: There's (not always, but) often a tangible point where my acquaintances tend to turn into friends. It's usually some bonding experience. We stayed up all night and did X. We drank together and had a heart to heart. We both love doing Y and spent a lot of time doing that. We travelled together. We suffered through college classes. We spent weekends hanging out together. We spent years talking on IRC. Often there's also some something about level of trust. Someone reveals something about themselves. They talk about something personal that they normally wouldn't. Etc. Absent either of those, my acquaintances tend to stay acquaintances. On the flipside, I've found that keeping around people who don't value you, don't have your best interests at heart or intentionally cause you to feel bad in any way is just a bad idea. Wanting to become better friends doesn't make it so. It's a two sided thing. Really, I love most of my friends and I'd sacrifice much for them, so when it comes to people like this, I don't have time for that shit. I have a relatively small number of close friends, and I don't get to spend time with all of them all the time. And as time passes and life happens, friendships form and fade (and I find that the good ones can kickstart right back - even years later.) All that is fine and natural. It's really about mutual happiness, fun and sharing, and the rest doesn't matter. It doesn't have to be complicated. Hope this helps!
  - malone 12y ago
    Thank you for writing that. I'm going through a rough patch at the moment and you've really given me a moment of clarity. I've realized that there is at least one person in my life that I should be considering a friend which I didn't previously, and one friend who I should really downgrade to an acquaintance. If you ever find the time to write down more of your thoughts about friendships I'd definitely be interested in reading them. I struggle to make new friends. The standard advice seems to be to go to meetups, do volunteering, and join sports clubs. I've tried those and can't get them to work for me. There's something more to it than just being in attendance. I think you're definitely right about that tangible point where things change, and I never manage to quite get there. I don't know if that tipping point is something you can instigate or if you just have to leave it to chance.
- jmnicolas 12y ago
  Well this is the problem of about 90% of the geek population : having the skills to understand machines / code leave you with less brain power for social interactions. For me it would not be a problem if I could just resolve the female companionship problem (or lack thereof). I'm not even shy, it just seems that if I don't pay them women tend to ignore me ...
  - astrange 12y ago
    Start picking up and putting down heavy objects and remember to do something with your hair in the morning.
luckydude 12y ago
Hijack alert, I'm making this about geeks. Feel free to ignore. I did one of these, I think, for Roger Faulkner, Mr /proc (not the linux one, the original one). Some back story, I needed to learn something from Roger, I was working in building 5 at Sun with the rest of the Sun kernel people, I was upstairs, Roger was downstairs, whatever. So I was pretty junior and I walked into Roger's office and he ignored me. I was sitting on his desk next to his monitor, he was looking at the monitor and typing away. I waited. He eventually said something like "what the fuck do you want?" And I said "I want to know about <something I've long since forgotten>" And he said "why should I teach you about that?" And I said "because I'm going to sit here and belch and fart until you do" He laughed and we became friends. We were both nerds with very few friends but when we connected over technology, that's a bond. It's a bond that is hard to put into words and have people understand, but we bonded (you guys should get the nerd bond. I hope). It turned into a thanksgiving at my flat in San Francisco many years ago (I have a vague feeling that Theo might have been there but I dunno). In some ways it was a sad nerd fest, in other ways it was so cool. I wouldn't trade that for anything, yeah it was nerdy, and yeah it was some dudes hanging out without any girls that we so wanted, but we had fun, it was a good time. I'm all for thanksgiving being a place where you can hang out with your friends. Lots of people are away from their families, so go gather in the nerds, whatever, gather in the people that you care about. Who you gather is up to you but I'd vote for gathering in the people who are mostly ignored. Lots of them have lots to offer.
milesskorpen 12y ago
And there are many many similar celebrations held the weekends surrounding Thanksgiving, so larger groups can attend.
X-Istence 12y ago
Doing friendsgiving a couple of days after thanksgiving. This way we can get more friends to come together :-).
smackay 12y ago
From my time in Seattle, Friendsgiving and Friendsmas was probably the best feature of American culture that I experienced. I lived in the University District, and my future wife was in graduate school at the University of Washington. There was always somebody around at holiday times so rather than than sit around thinking about why they were not on a plane going home it was time to get on the phone and get cooking. Even when going to the homes of almost complete strangers it was always an enjoyable occasion. Lots to drink always helped but the lack of family-related stress while not being alone was a big part too for which many people were quite grateful.
NDizzle 12y ago
Our friendsgiving was 45 people this year. 3 turkeys, and everyone brought at least a dish. Lots of fun. We did mini pineapple upside-down cakes and somehow the only corn dish, scalloped corn.
abennobashi 12y ago
"I was having tough times with my parents...as one does when they're 25." Speak for yourself lady. Skip.
steverb 12y ago
Oddly enough, we just always called that Thanksgiving. Sometimes we visited family, sometimes family visited us, sometimes we just gathered with whoever was around. The need to create some sort of alternative label confuses me, but then again I grew up semi-nomadic.
- justifier 12y ago
  branding is a form of pithy yet effective value assertion honestly the tradition of thanksgiving is grounded in a a disgusting past that is branded as a beautiful time to give thanks the story goes :: a group of immigrants came to a strange country they felt was empty enough to set up a home for themselves but when winter came they were wholly unprepared for life in this new environment there they laid dying, starving, and the natives to the land came and shared all they had with these immigrants and showed them how and what to plant in winter soil the immigrants survived that winter and we now give thanks, but the following spring they used their regrown strengths to decimate the population of the natives in order to take their land fuck honoring that now if you want to say you like getting together with family and friends for big meals, but we are all so busy we need to designate at least once a year it must be on the third thursday of november i am all for it just call it something else so we can leave behind the baggage of the long since skewed bullshit that is thanksgiving and keep the stuff that it's really about: interacting over food friendsgiving? ok..? some friends and i began to grow busy in different directions so we organised a big group meal once a week, we always just called it our 'sunday destiny' . also, fuck columbus day too: " Arawak men and women, naked, tawny, and full of wonder, emerged from their villages onto the island's beaches and swam out to get a closer look at the strange big boat. When Columbus and his sailors came ashore, carrying swords, speaking oddly, the Arawaks ran to greet them, brought them food, water, gifts. He later wrote of this in his log: They ... brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks' bells. They willingly traded everything they owned... . They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features.... They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane... . They would make fine servants.... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want. ".. Howard Zinn, A People's History of the US .. http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncol1.html http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncol1.html
velocitypsycho 12y ago
Pretty cool and hip till your parents are gone and you wish you'd spent more time with them. Don't get me wrong, Thanksgiving with friends can be awesome, but you need to make time for family. You can't assume they will always be there.
- makmanalp 12y ago
  And that's totally fine - for the past few years we've done friendsgiving the weekend after. That way a lot of friends can make it too. And turkeys are usually on sale if you're into that. And really if everyone pitches in something, it's a pretty darned cost effective meal too.
- Thriptic 12y ago
  It's all relative. I live close to my parents, and have the privilege of having dinner with them about once every other week. Meanwhile, if I'm lucky, I get to see my best friend who lives far away once every 6 months. Given this disparity, I would greatly prefer hanging out with my friend during the holidays rather than burning vacation days spending time with my nuclear family (who I see often) and extended family (who I am not close with at all) just because tradition dictates that I should do so.
- CalRobert 12y ago
  You also can't assume everyone will want to spend time with their parents. Some people grew up in abusive households. Some families are toxic. People don't spend time with their friends to be "cool and hip" (or if they do, I doubt that qualifies as "friends").
- dneronique 12y ago
  This is more than a bit snarky. I find traveling home for both Thanksgiving and Christmas is prohibitively expensive and difficult to acquire sufficient time off for both from work. I usually opt for taking no time off Thanksgiving week, holding a Friendsgiving, and then being free to spend more days with the fam at Xmas time. Friendsgiving is not always an excuse to avoid family.
  - 12y ago
munificent 12y ago
The two concepts aren't mutually exclusive. For the past couple of years, we've invited both my wife's family (who live in the same city as us) and a bunch of our friends over. It's worked out great. Our kids get tons of other kids to play with, we get to spend time with friends and family, and it's a lot more lively than it would be with just the older family folks there.
reality_czech 12y ago
I would rather celebrate Festivus instead: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festivus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festivus Featuring the Airing of Grievances, Feats of Strength, an aluminum pole, Festivus dinner, and more!
- jjgreen 12y ago
  A festival for the rest of us!
softrage 12y ago
I never held Thanksgiving in particularly high esteem, and used to think of it as just the more minor holiday before Christmas, but over the years it has grown a lot in significance for me. I've been doing "Friendsgiving" for many years now, but I didn't start doing it because of any kind of convenience or difficulty with family. In my case, it was born out of necessity. I live in Los Angeles, which attracts a lot of young people with a lot of different dreams. The reality is that with the combination of only a small amount of vacation time we receive in the US, living a long distance from family, and not having enough money, it often means that you can't go back for all of the holidays and need to prioritize. For me, since my hometown high school friends all went back around Christmas, I chose that time to spend with family. Since we were stuck here in the new city, we decided to have a Thanksgiving and jokingly referred to it as something like "Thanksgiving for the displaced youth of Los Angeles." It turned out that a lot of people we knew here were in the same situation, because turnout was good. I'm also fortunate to have friends from all over the world, and since it isn't an international holiday they didn't have much reason to return home. We continue to grow closer as a group every year, and as people have brought their friends we have made new friends too. It has gone from something we did because we were all stuck in the same place together to something that we actually seek out and look forward to. Now we even have friends come in from thousands of miles away who have since moved to other cities or even out of the country. Now I can afford to go back for Thanksgiving, but I don't see myself doing it. It's not that I don't cherish the time I spend with family, but now I also have a holiday which, previously an afterthought, is a very important day when I get to spend time with people I deeply care about.
pskept 12y ago
This article aggravates me. My problem with it is more than just the lackluster content or the lack of relevance to this site. My problem with this article is that I know a group of people who have a celebration just like this. The only difference is that they do it because they have lost their family that they would spend this time with.
eitally 12y ago
We've been doing this for years, though less so since we've had our own children and it's become easier to convince extended family to visit us. Friendsgiving parties are waaaaaaaaay better than family Thanksgivings!
omurphyevans 12y ago
I do this at Xmas - since my parents split acrimoniously, it was too difficult to do a 'family' holiday. So I see both a weekend around Xmas, then have friends over for Xmas - other people with split families, Aussies and Kiwis who can't get home this year etc. It beats a family Xmas hands down. (British here, so no Thanksgiving)

58 points by lmg643 12y ago

We're doing our first Friendsgiving this year, tomorrow actually. Still plan on seeing the folks on Thanksgiving Day, but it's excuse to have a party and hang out with the people that are close to us. Should be fun :)

xj9 12y ago

I'm glad we've re-appropriated this holiday to celebrate friendship. My friends are just as big a part of me as my own family.

judk 12y ago

Not very new (at least a decade old) but it's a good thing to publicize.

moonka 12y ago

I think these type of things are going to continue to grow. As people become more mobile and move around the country, to get together for holidays they have to travel. And travel has become increasingly painful, especially around holidays. Between the TSA, flight delays, and uncomfortable seats, I've cut down on my air travel quite a bit.

_RPM 12y ago

It must be nice having friends. I don't have friends in the sense that I do things together socially with them. I have acquaintances.

notduncansmith 12y ago
I know the feeling. The only friends of mine that I'd choose to spend time with outside of work... I know from work.
- jacalata 12y ago
  So...have you tried asking them if they want to do something outside work?
  - notduncansmith 12y ago
    Yes, we do stuff outside work somewhat often. Sorry, that comment was poorly-worded.
bequanna 12y ago
I'm not trying to be a jerk, but how many friends you do or don't have is entirely up to you. I'm an introvert and it is tough meeting people. I'm not saying it is easy to move out of your comfort zone, but it is necessary. If you want to be more social and have more friends, then make conscious effort be more social and make more friends.
- fixedd 12y ago
  ... says the non-married person who doesn't have full-time kids.
  - im2w1l 12y ago
    Become friends with your kids' friends' parents.
  - bequanna 12y ago
    For the record, I am happily married with no kids. Just to be clear, both of those things are choices one makes, not excuses to be made.
    - fixedd 12y ago
      I don't know why I was being quite so aggressive when I wrote that. I'm sorry... I think I was taking frustration out on you when you had nothing to do with it. I still disagree with the assertion that "how many friends you do or don't have is entirely up to you". It may be true in some extremely narrow sense, but if it came down to it how many people would give up the spouse they love because they were the problem, or their children because they were, or drop everything and move to where people were more similar to themselves?
- Dewie 12y ago
  > I'm not trying to be a jerk, but how many friends you do or don't have is entirely up to you. Right, because someone with no friends probably have never thought or believed that it is their own fault for being shy/uninteresting/boring (and that they're shy/uninteresting/boring in part because ... they have no friends). It has probably never crossed their mind at all. > I'm an introvert and it is tough meeting people. I'm not saying it is easy to move out of your comfort zone, but it is necessary. If you want to be more social and have more friends, then make conscious effort be more social and make more friends. In order to be social, you need to try to be social. Right.
makmanalp 12y ago
I've thought a lot about friendships in general, and I don't have time to write all that, but I think it boils down to these: There's (not always, but) often a tangible point where my acquaintances tend to turn into friends. It's usually some bonding experience. We stayed up all night and did X. We drank together and had a heart to heart. We both love doing Y and spent a lot of time doing that. We travelled together. We suffered through college classes. We spent weekends hanging out together. We spent years talking on IRC. Often there's also some something about level of trust. Someone reveals something about themselves. They talk about something personal that they normally wouldn't. Etc. Absent either of those, my acquaintances tend to stay acquaintances. On the flipside, I've found that keeping around people who don't value you, don't have your best interests at heart or intentionally cause you to feel bad in any way is just a bad idea. Wanting to become better friends doesn't make it so. It's a two sided thing. Really, I love most of my friends and I'd sacrifice much for them, so when it comes to people like this, I don't have time for that shit. I have a relatively small number of close friends, and I don't get to spend time with all of them all the time. And as time passes and life happens, friendships form and fade (and I find that the good ones can kickstart right back - even years later.) All that is fine and natural. It's really about mutual happiness, fun and sharing, and the rest doesn't matter. It doesn't have to be complicated. Hope this helps!
- malone 12y ago
  Thank you for writing that. I'm going through a rough patch at the moment and you've really given me a moment of clarity. I've realized that there is at least one person in my life that I should be considering a friend which I didn't previously, and one friend who I should really downgrade to an acquaintance. If you ever find the time to write down more of your thoughts about friendships I'd definitely be interested in reading them. I struggle to make new friends. The standard advice seems to be to go to meetups, do volunteering, and join sports clubs. I've tried those and can't get them to work for me. There's something more to it than just being in attendance. I think you're definitely right about that tangible point where things change, and I never manage to quite get there. I don't know if that tipping point is something you can instigate or if you just have to leave it to chance.
jmnicolas 12y ago
Well this is the problem of about 90% of the geek population : having the skills to understand machines / code leave you with less brain power for social interactions. For me it would not be a problem if I could just resolve the female companionship problem (or lack thereof). I'm not even shy, it just seems that if I don't pay them women tend to ignore me ...
- astrange 12y ago
  Start picking up and putting down heavy objects and remember to do something with your hair in the morning.

luckydude 12y ago

Hijack alert, I'm making this about geeks. Feel free to ignore. I did one of these, I think, for Roger Faulkner, Mr /proc (not the linux one, the original one). Some back story, I needed to learn something from Roger, I was working in building 5 at Sun with the rest of the Sun kernel people, I was upstairs, Roger was downstairs, whatever. So I was pretty junior and I walked into Roger's office and he ignored me. I was sitting on his desk next to his monitor, he was looking at the monitor and typing away. I waited. He eventually said something like "what the fuck do you want?" And I said "I want to know about <something I've long since forgotten>" And he said "why should I teach you about that?" And I said "because I'm going to sit here and belch and fart until you do" He laughed and we became friends. We were both nerds with very few friends but when we connected over technology, that's a bond. It's a bond that is hard to put into words and have people understand, but we bonded (you guys should get the nerd bond. I hope). It turned into a thanksgiving at my flat in San Francisco many years ago (I have a vague feeling that Theo might have been there but I dunno). In some ways it was a sad nerd fest, in other ways it was so cool. I wouldn't trade that for anything, yeah it was nerdy, and yeah it was some dudes hanging out without any girls that we so wanted, but we had fun, it was a good time. I'm all for thanksgiving being a place where you can hang out with your friends. Lots of people are away from their families, so go gather in the nerds, whatever, gather in the people that you care about. Who you gather is up to you but I'd vote for gathering in the people who are mostly ignored. Lots of them have lots to offer.

milesskorpen 12y ago

And there are many many similar celebrations held the weekends surrounding Thanksgiving, so larger groups can attend.

X-Istence 12y ago

Doing friendsgiving a couple of days after thanksgiving. This way we can get more friends to come together :-).

smackay 12y ago

From my time in Seattle, Friendsgiving and Friendsmas was probably the best feature of American culture that I experienced. I lived in the University District, and my future wife was in graduate school at the University of Washington. There was always somebody around at holiday times so rather than than sit around thinking about why they were not on a plane going home it was time to get on the phone and get cooking. Even when going to the homes of almost complete strangers it was always an enjoyable occasion. Lots to drink always helped but the lack of family-related stress while not being alone was a big part too for which many people were quite grateful.

NDizzle 12y ago

Our friendsgiving was 45 people this year. 3 turkeys, and everyone brought at least a dish. Lots of fun. We did mini pineapple upside-down cakes and somehow the only corn dish, scalloped corn.

abennobashi 12y ago

"I was having tough times with my parents...as one does when they're 25." Speak for yourself lady. Skip.

steverb 12y ago

Oddly enough, we just always called that Thanksgiving. Sometimes we visited family, sometimes family visited us, sometimes we just gathered with whoever was around. The need to create some sort of alternative label confuses me, but then again I grew up semi-nomadic.

justifier 12y ago
branding is a form of pithy yet effective value assertion honestly the tradition of thanksgiving is grounded in a a disgusting past that is branded as a beautiful time to give thanks the story goes :: a group of immigrants came to a strange country they felt was empty enough to set up a home for themselves but when winter came they were wholly unprepared for life in this new environment there they laid dying, starving, and the natives to the land came and shared all they had with these immigrants and showed them how and what to plant in winter soil the immigrants survived that winter and we now give thanks, but the following spring they used their regrown strengths to decimate the population of the natives in order to take their land fuck honoring that now if you want to say you like getting together with family and friends for big meals, but we are all so busy we need to designate at least once a year it must be on the third thursday of november i am all for it just call it something else so we can leave behind the baggage of the long since skewed bullshit that is thanksgiving and keep the stuff that it's really about: interacting over food friendsgiving? ok..? some friends and i began to grow busy in different directions so we organised a big group meal once a week, we always just called it our 'sunday destiny' . also, fuck columbus day too: " Arawak men and women, naked, tawny, and full of wonder, emerged from their villages onto the island's beaches and swam out to get a closer look at the strange big boat. When Columbus and his sailors came ashore, carrying swords, speaking oddly, the Arawaks ran to greet them, brought them food, water, gifts. He later wrote of this in his log: They ... brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks' bells. They willingly traded everything they owned... . They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features.... They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane... . They would make fine servants.... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want. ".. Howard Zinn, A People's History of the US .. http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncol1.html http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncol1.html

velocitypsycho 12y ago

Pretty cool and hip till your parents are gone and you wish you'd spent more time with them. Don't get me wrong, Thanksgiving with friends can be awesome, but you need to make time for family. You can't assume they will always be there.

makmanalp 12y ago
And that's totally fine - for the past few years we've done friendsgiving the weekend after. That way a lot of friends can make it too. And turkeys are usually on sale if you're into that. And really if everyone pitches in something, it's a pretty darned cost effective meal too.
Thriptic 12y ago
It's all relative. I live close to my parents, and have the privilege of having dinner with them about once every other week. Meanwhile, if I'm lucky, I get to see my best friend who lives far away once every 6 months. Given this disparity, I would greatly prefer hanging out with my friend during the holidays rather than burning vacation days spending time with my nuclear family (who I see often) and extended family (who I am not close with at all) just because tradition dictates that I should do so.
CalRobert 12y ago
You also can't assume everyone will want to spend time with their parents. Some people grew up in abusive households. Some families are toxic. People don't spend time with their friends to be "cool and hip" (or if they do, I doubt that qualifies as "friends").
dneronique 12y ago
This is more than a bit snarky. I find traveling home for both Thanksgiving and Christmas is prohibitively expensive and difficult to acquire sufficient time off for both from work. I usually opt for taking no time off Thanksgiving week, holding a Friendsgiving, and then being free to spend more days with the fam at Xmas time. Friendsgiving is not always an excuse to avoid family.
- 12y ago

munificent 12y ago

The two concepts aren't mutually exclusive. For the past couple of years, we've invited both my wife's family (who live in the same city as us) and a bunch of our friends over. It's worked out great. Our kids get tons of other kids to play with, we get to spend time with friends and family, and it's a lot more lively than it would be with just the older family folks there.

reality_czech 12y ago

I would rather celebrate Festivus instead: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festivus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festivus Featuring the Airing of Grievances, Feats of Strength, an aluminum pole, Festivus dinner, and more!

jjgreen 12y ago
A festival for the rest of us!

softrage 12y ago

I never held Thanksgiving in particularly high esteem, and used to think of it as just the more minor holiday before Christmas, but over the years it has grown a lot in significance for me. I've been doing "Friendsgiving" for many years now, but I didn't start doing it because of any kind of convenience or difficulty with family. In my case, it was born out of necessity. I live in Los Angeles, which attracts a lot of young people with a lot of different dreams. The reality is that with the combination of only a small amount of vacation time we receive in the US, living a long distance from family, and not having enough money, it often means that you can't go back for all of the holidays and need to prioritize. For me, since my hometown high school friends all went back around Christmas, I chose that time to spend with family. Since we were stuck here in the new city, we decided to have a Thanksgiving and jokingly referred to it as something like "Thanksgiving for the displaced youth of Los Angeles." It turned out that a lot of people we knew here were in the same situation, because turnout was good. I'm also fortunate to have friends from all over the world, and since it isn't an international holiday they didn't have much reason to return home. We continue to grow closer as a group every year, and as people have brought their friends we have made new friends too. It has gone from something we did because we were all stuck in the same place together to something that we actually seek out and look forward to. Now we even have friends come in from thousands of miles away who have since moved to other cities or even out of the country. Now I can afford to go back for Thanksgiving, but I don't see myself doing it. It's not that I don't cherish the time I spend with family, but now I also have a holiday which, previously an afterthought, is a very important day when I get to spend time with people I deeply care about.

pskept 12y ago

This article aggravates me. My problem with it is more than just the lackluster content or the lack of relevance to this site. My problem with this article is that I know a group of people who have a celebration just like this. The only difference is that they do it because they have lost their family that they would spend this time with.

eitally 12y ago

We've been doing this for years, though less so since we've had our own children and it's become easier to convince extended family to visit us. Friendsgiving parties are waaaaaaaaay better than family Thanksgivings!

omurphyevans 12y ago

I do this at Xmas - since my parents split acrimoniously, it was too difficult to do a 'family' holiday. So I see both a weekend around Xmas, then have friends over for Xmas - other people with split families, Aussies and Kiwis who can't get home this year etc. It beats a family Xmas hands down. (British here, so no Thanksgiving)