The holiday season often involves critical decisions regarding travel and family gatherings. Over the past few decades, an alternative to the traditional Thanksgiving family dinner has emerged: Friendsgiving. Vox's analysis explores the cultural and economic forces behind this phenomenon, which reporter Rebecca Jennings dubbed "the most millennial concept to ever exist".
Friendsgiving is a blend of the words "friends" and "Thanksgiving". Beyond this combination, the "rules defining Friendsgiving stop," allowing the event to be "whatever you want it to be". It can be held on the actual holiday or as a potluck in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving. While the popular '90s show Friends is associated with its popularization, the idea of friends sharing a Thanksgiving meal appeared earlier in media, such as 1973’s A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and episodes of Living Single in the early '90s.
The word "Friendsgiving" itself first appeared in Usenet and Twitter posts around 2007. According to Google search data, the term didn't receive significant mentions until 2013. Rebecca Jennings highlighted that its rise in popularity may be attributed to the progression of Twitter and other social media platforms between 2008 and the 2010s. Twitter launched its “Trends” feature in 2008 and popularized the use of hashtags between 2010 and 2014, which Rebecca Jennings noted likely helped the "snappy name" for the topic gain visibility and "contribute to its rise in the culture". Its cultural recognition solidified after being mentioned on The Real Housewives of New Jersey.
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The timing of Friendsgiving's emergence around 2007 is strongly tied to the Great Recession in the U.S., which lasted from December 2007 through June 2009. This global economic upheaval "disrupted the lives of families across the country". Rebecca Jennings suggested that at the time, people "couldn't travel home for the holidays" or were seeking a "more low-key Thanksgiving," often resulting in a potluck situation, which Friendsgiving "sort of implies". This factor "may have helped turn a catchy hashtag into something more".
Ultimately, Friendsgiving reflects the "social and cultural waves millennials were creating in the 2010s". Millennials, the first generation to "fully embrace social media", were more racially and ethnically diverse and more likely to be socially liberal. Crucially, they were "delaying these traditional markers of adulthood," such as getting married later or not getting married, and relying on their friends as their family "well into your 30s". Rebecca Jennings contrasted the traditional expectation of buying a house to host Thanksgiving for extended family with the "millennial tradition," which is "like staying in your rented apartment and hosting a potluck for your friends".
By redefining culture and making new traditions, Friendsgiving became a celebration where people gathered with those outside their given family, particularly when they "couldn’t or didn't want to go home". Rebecca Jennings concluded that Friendsgiving is a "great way to reinvent old traditions," allowing people to celebrate "where you're at and with the people that you want to celebrate with," even if they don't possess the "beautiful colonial house that you think you're supposed to have when you're a grownup".
Vox also acknowledged that the holiday Friendsgiving is based on has much darker origins than the "myth" taught in elementary school about a simple feast between Pilgrims and Native Americans. The history involving the Wampanoag people and English colonialists before 1620 was "complex, bloody", and the Wampanoag had many ceremonies for giving thanks that predate President Lincoln proclaiming Thanksgiving as a national holiday in 1863. Friendsgiving offers a chance to "reinvent the holiday entirely".
