Friendsgiving

Submission 10,226

Part of a series on Thanksgiving. [View Related Entries]

Overview

Friendsgiving, a portmanteau of "friends" and "Thanksgiving," is an unofficial holiday in which a group of people of nonfamilial relations hold a Thanksgiving meal. The holiday is usually celebrated the day or week before Thanksgiving or the week after.

Background

Thanksgiving was made a federal holiday in the United States in 1863, focusing on the idea of going "home" for Thanksgiving, indicating that Thanksgiving should be spent with the family. At the time, lithographs depicted people traveling home for the holiday. According to the Atlantic,^[1] "'Home for Thanksgiving' became a mantra."

While the term was likely used and holiday celebrated prior to its online prevalence, the earliest mention of "Friendsgiving" online was posted on October 20th, 2007 by Twitter ^[4] user @bartekci. That day, they tweeted, "time to cook a turkey for friendsgiving! This will be interesting" (shown below).

Development

On November 26th, 2009, Urban Dictionary^[2] user makalive45 defined the holiday, "The celebration of Thanksgiving dinner with your friends. This usually occurs on the Wednesday before or the Friday after Thanksgiving Day, since Thanksgiving is usually reserved for family gatherings." The post received more than 245 upvotes in nine years (shown below).

The following year, on November 24th, 2010, Blogspot^[3] user speakingofblog made a blogpost about the holding a Friendsgiving.

In 2011, various media outlets covered the unofficial holiday, including Thought Catalog, who published "Let's All Give Thanks for Friendsgiving" that year.^[5] That year, Bailey's Irish Cream liquor brand used the phrase in a national advertising campaign^[6] (shown below, left). Additionally, YouTuber Stewdippin : LET'S GET NERDY" published a video "Friends-Giving: It's Gonna Be a Thing" (shown below, right).

On June 6th, 2011, the holiday is mentioned by on an episode of The Real Housewives of New Jersey entitled "Gobblefellas."^[7]

Two years later, on October 23rd, 2013, BuzzFeed ^[8] published a list of "17 Rules Of Friendsgiving."

As of November 2018, the hashtag "#friendsgiving" has more than 1 million posts on Instagram. ^[9]

Interpretations

The meaning of the holiday as been interpreted as both a celebration of community outside the family, as well as a side effect of millennial marrying and procreating later in life. The Atlantic writes, "When childless or unmarried adults consider themselves to be in a temporary, transitional phase, with marriage and kids and traditional adulthood hallmarks such as homeownership just around the corner, they may not place as much emphasis on friends or Friendsgiving."

Others have speculated that a Friendsgiving potluck-style meal is a reflection of economic downturn, as the meals are typically smaller in fashion and less extravagant than the traditional thanksgiving meal or, if celebrated after Thanksgiving, as a feast of leftovers.

Malcolm Harris, author of Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials, says "'Friendsgiving' is a propaganda weapon used by the ruling class to further their plans for wage stagnation.” According to the Atlantic,^[1] he believes that the placing a "cutesy" portmanteau onto a "scraped-together, potluck-style event popular with Millennials that will never actually rival the lavish spreads of real Thanksgiving implies approval by the powers that be of Millennial adults’ lower income and lower living standards compared with those of prior generations."