
Friendsgiving, a new tradition to be thankful for - lmg643
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/friendsgiving-a-new-tradition-to-be-thankful-for/2014/11/25/66aab37a-74b6-11e4-a755-e32227229e7b_story.html
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steverb
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
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)

~~~
viewer5
Without exaggeration nor sarcasm, I don't think a single person in the US past
5th grade is celebrating Thanksgiving to honor those events. You learn about
the pilgrims in elementary school, and the origins of the holiday. Then, once
you're a little older, you learn about all the horrible things that happened.

And popular culture doesn't depict it as being about that, either; it's a time
to give thanks, and be with friends and family, and eat lots of food, and go
shopping soon, but I never see it depicted as even ostensibly being about the
history of it.

So in my experience, you're sort of preaching to the choir, and, to extend the
metaphor, EVERYBODY is in the choir.

If I'm mistaken, and someone reading this does celebrate Thanksgiving to honor
the history of it, I'd be interested to hear from you.

~~~
justifier
I was addressing the question regarding the compulsion to rebrand

> The need to create some sort of alternative label confuses me

Also, I work in a hostel and these past weeks I have seen innumerable 20+ year
staff members tell the classic pilgrim and indian story to many foreigners
questions of 'what is thanksgiving'

So perhaps my personal experience struck me sensitive this morning, but I also
feel the standard menu, which seriously requires a revisit, also continues to
tell this story on many tables every thanksgiving across the states

How many of us have heard heckled from the pews this year, or thought
themselves, when a suggestion to change a traditional staple: 'how can you
call it thanksgiving without turkey'potatoes'pumpkin pie'whatever'; which is a
direct effect of the history and personal traditions of the holiday

~~~
viewer5
> I was addressing the question regarding the compulsion to rebrand

I'm not sure "rebrand" is the right word; "Friendsgiving" is a deviation from
the well-established norm of spending Thanksgiving with family, so giving it a
separate, derivative name doesn't seem inappropriate. I myself am in the
middle of organizing a separate celebration with friends, on Saturday, and I'm
also calling it something that ends in "-sgiving", because we're doing it in
the general spirit of (obviously not-historic) Thanksgiving, but it doesn't
fit the cultural standard (on Thursday, with family).

> I have seen innumerable 20+ year staff members tell the classic pilgrim and
> indian story to many foreigners questions of 'what is thanksgiving'

If I were asked that, I think I would give the same answer. Though I would
also tell someone what Christmas was about, if asked, without feeling the need
to explain how I don't believe it or for what reasons.

I also don't think I'd add the "disclaimer" about how messed up the whole
original Thanksgiving stuff was unless someone pressed me for it or inquired
further, though if I think about it, I'm not sure why; it almost seems like a
separate question to me. Interesting.

What do you think?

~~~
justifier
I suppose this is why I used the descriptor 'value assertion'

How does a native American reservation celebrate the third Thursday?

My deliberate disdain for some cultural artifacts are mainly to be inclusive
to those who are potentially marginalized by the status quo, Full inclusion is
a highest value of mine that I try to assert in in my actions and thoughts

Christmas, like all religious activities, is exclusive to everyone who
believes outside a community's line, and as such is abhorrent to me, and i
state the same to anyone who asks my understanding of it

It feels a scientific approach: your world is flat unless you choose to extend
your sight beyond the horizon; and I'm always on the lookout for horizons I
have yet to extend

------
luckydude
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.

------
velocitypsycho
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.

~~~
dneronique
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.

~~~
velocitypsycho
Choosing more days on Xmas fits what I said about making time for family.

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_RPM
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.

~~~
bequanna
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
... says the non-married person who doesn't have full-time kids.

~~~
bequanna
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
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?

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softrage
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.

------
smackay
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.

------
reality_czech
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
A festival for the rest of us!

------
notduncansmith
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 :)

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xj9
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.

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moonka
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.

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pskept
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.

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munificent
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.

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

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omurphyevans
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)

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

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eitally
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!

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NDizzle
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.

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

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

