Image via Complex Original
It was only a matter of a time before rising gas prices and dinnertime Instagrams took Friendsgiving from kitschy hipster ritual to its own full blown holiday. Now more than ever, urban twenty-somethings without money, time, or patience to travel back home are staying put and celebrating Turkey Day with their besties.
In retrospect, it’s a surprise it took us this long to realize that spending a four-day weekend off with people we actually enjoy being around was a much better proposition than awkward banter with in-laws who never remember our names (despite liking every photo we’ve uploaded to our Facebook wall). It only took a year for the Pilgrims to ditch Squanto and the Indians; maybe it’s time to cut ties completely and make Friendsgiving the de facto November dinner.
Here’s ten reasons Friendsgiving > Thanksgiving. Don’t worry, Mom, we’ll see you at Christmas. That is, until Festivus comes into its own.
10. More Booze
Alcohol tends to be more of a key component to a Friendsgiving meal than to its traditional family Thanksgiving counterpart. Sure, there’s probably a few glasses of red wine being poured back home, and Dad is keeping that 24-pack of Coors Light on the back porch, but Friendsgiving is about the hard stuff.
Half of your friends can’t cook and if it’s a potluck, that means ten bottles of Jim Bean alongside the mac-n-cheese casserole and pumpkin spice cupcakes. Friendsgiving is also notoriously tequila friendly, whereas your racist grandpa would never allow something called Jose Cuervo at his table, dagnabbit.
9. No Driving, Airports, or Driving to the Airport
If Friendsgiving isn't at your place, then it's typically just a subway line or two away. Avoiding holiday traffic is reason to be thankful enough, and if the weather is bad, impromptu slumber parties are always more fun in a Flatbush loft than a JetBlue terminal.
8. No Family Drama
The genius of Friendsgiving is in its name—before now, Thanksgiving has always been about the gathering of family members, dissimilar people from different generations with different philosophies and attitudes who only share a last name and receding hairline.
Instead of arguing about what to do with Grandma’s ’87 Bonneville when she dies, the most heated conversations at Friendsgiving typically concern Lady Gaga’s current relevance and Game of Thrones spoilers.
7. More Creative Menus
Thanksgiving is almost always going to be about the carrots, corn, cranberries, and candied yams. If your family isn’t completely conservative, the only change of pace might be what kind of bird(s) are stuffed inside the turkey.
But with a guest list full of adventurous amateur chefs using recipes found from the farthest corners of the Internet, Friendsgiving is the most exciting dinner party of the year. There’s something for everyone. And, while some gourmet experiments may end up being epic fails, it only adds to the fun. After all, cracking a joke about a friend's failed casserole is totally fair game.
6. TV Democracy
Television has always been central to Thanksgiving. With no gifts to give or candles to light, there’s nothing to do while the bird roasts in the oven but gather around the boob tube. After dinner, everyone’s too full to do anything else. Depending on which divorced parent you spend your Thanksgiving with, you’re probably relegated to either watching football or corny ABC Family holiday-themed movies(or if you’re lucky, Home Alone.) This is fine if you like watching the Detroit Lions or Dean Cain embarrass themselves, but you can’t please everyone all of the time. Someone is will inevitably be stuck watching something they have absolutely no interest in.
At Friendsgiving, you’re with people of similar interests, and figuring out which channel to land on is a much easier process. In fact, since you don’t have to avoid incredibly painful small talk with your cousins, you might just eschew the TV altogether, throw on some music and actually have a meaningful conservation with someone you like. It’s a brave new world.
4. It's a Team Effort
It's not all on Mom at Friendsgiving. There's no awkward familial hierarchy at play, and while that might cause some confusion at carving time, having everyone pitch in and do their part makes the holiday less stressful and more pleasant for both host and guests. Maybe you might have gotten away with sitting on the couch and not lifting a finger at home, but you'll be surprised at how much more enjoyable that afterdinner belt-loosening is when you've done your part to make it all happen. Adios, lingering guilt that you've been selfish and ungrateful!
3. No Creepy Uncles
Everyone’s got one. And they only get creepier with a couple glasses of wine in them. At Friendsgiving, you don’t have to worry about bumping into him outside the upstairs bathroom. At Friendsgiving, you don’t have to worry about awkward shoulder rubs on the sofa or lingering goodbye kisses.
That’s not to say one of your pervy friends won’t be the Creepy Uncle equivalent at Friendsgiving, but a careful system of social checks and balances are there to protect you, whereas at home, Mom will just remind you that’s “just his way.”
2. Make-Out Sessions Are Slightly Less Awkward; Much Less Emotionally Scarring
Friendsgiving tends to go later into the night than Thanksgiving, and with the booze flowing, it might be hard to avoid the inevitable make-out sesh with that girl from work you’ve been incessantly flirting with.
You might regret it the following Monday, but not as much as you would had you made-out with someone at your family’s Thanksgiving party. Either they were related to you or they were married to someone related to you. Either way, it’s going to be super awkward at Christmas.
1. Drunken Dance Parties
A good Thanksgiving ends with no one getting vomitting or getting banished from the family because they put the moves on their younger cousin. A good Friendsgiving ends with an all-out, no holds barred dance party. By the end of the night, everyone will be drunk, elated, and eager to burn off some stuffing calories. It only makes sense to push the makeshift dinner table to the side and bust some moves that would make the Puritans spin in their graves.
Whether it’s DDR, Just Dance, The Michael Jackson Experience or—God forbid— dancing without the aid of a video game console, Friendsgiving should go out the way it came in: a bunch of people just happy to be around each other and grinding grooving through life together. If you haven’t given this nascent holiday a shot yet, this is the year you should. When Monday rolls around and you’ve got to mentally prepare yourself for work and the upcoming holiday season, you’ll be glad you did.
Unless of course, you have no friends or you’re one of those weirdos who actually likes their family and enjoys spending time with them. Happy Thanksgiving, freak.