Friendsgiving, explained

Key Takeaways

November can be a busy time of the year, so it's helpful to know a few things in advance, like what are the shipping times for packages? Is there an election this year? And [music] will you be going home for the holidays? Millions of people in the US make the decision to travel during this time. In the past few decades, an option besides going home for a Thanksgiving family dinner has emerged. >> How can they do this to us? It's Thanksgiving. >> Okay, I tell you what. How about if I cook dinner at my place? I'll make it just like mom's. >> Will you make the mashed potatoes with the lumps? >> The hit 90s TV sitcom Friends has been associated with the popularization of Friendsgiving. [music] >> It's Friendsgiving. Friendsgiving. >> Friends Giving. >> It's like the end in a note where I must say, >> oh yeah, Friendsgiving. >> Yeah. >> But contrary to popular opinion, Friendsgiving did not start with friends. It's had a long history of giving people a chance to reinvent the holiday [music] entirely. Friendsgiving is a combination of the words friends and Thanksgiving. [music] And right here is about where the rules defining Friendsgiving stop. >> Friendsgiving can be whatever you want it to be. It can be the actual Thanksgiving or it can be a potluck in the weeks before Thanksgiving. [music] The concept of having dinner with your friends on or around Thanksgiving does show up in media earlier than friends, but it didn't quite have a name yet. You can see the concepts of it, however, on 1973's A Charlie Brown [music] Thanksgiving. This delightful movie centers around a Thanksgiving meal shared amongst friends. In the early 90s, Living Single had Thanksgiving episodes, too. Highlighted by Yamalo. >> The actual use of the word Friendsgiving doesn't show up until 2007 in Usenet and Twitter posts. According to Google search data, the word Friendsgiving itself doesn't have significant mentions until 2013. [music] This rise in popularity may be attributed to Twitter and other social media platforms progression between 2008 and the [music] 2010s. >> So, it turns out Friendsgiving comes from the early era of hashtags, which is really funny. It goes to show like how much a snappy name for something can really contribute to its rise in the culture. Twitter [music] launched their trends feature in 2008 and popularized the use of hashtags between 2010 to 2014 which probably helped hashtag [music] friendsgiving as a topic become more visible on social media >> and then they said it on the real housewives of New Jersey and then you know a cultural phenomenon was born. >> Happy Friendsgiving >> from there friendsgiving has stuck around >> to your friendsgiving >> through Friendsgiving. But it isn't all breaking wishbones and cranberry sauce. [laughter] >> Why don't you GO SEE IT? STOP IT. >> Now this feels like Thanksgiving. >> Why Friendsgiving emerged around 2007 could also be indicative of what was happening around that time. Not to mention the holiday it's based on has much darker origins. In elementary school, I learned Thanksgiving is when the pilgrims first came to America and they [music] didn't know anything about the land. Native Americans were kind people and lended the pilgrims a helping hand in starting their new life here. They had a big feast with meat and maze to celebrate a successful harvest and a fruitful friendship. Yeah, that's a myth. The history of what happened between the Wampa people and English colonialists during that time is complex. It's bloody and it goes back further than 1620. The Wampanok have many ceremonies and festivals that predate President Lincoln proclaiming Thanksgiving as a national holiday in 1863. Outside of the misstated history of Thanksgiving, the word Friendsgiving appeared during a time of great economic upheaval [music] around the world. >> Now it's official. We are in a recession. >> This recession uh in some ways unprecedented. >> The World Bank is predicting a deeper global recession than before. Things may get worse before they get better. The Great Recession in the US lasted from December 2007 through June 2009 and disrupted the lives of families across the country. >> Um, at the time of the recession, maybe people couldn't travel home for the holidays. Maybe they were trying to do a more low-key Thanksgiving, so more of a potluck situation, which I think a Friendsgiving sort of implies >> and may have helped turn a catchy hashtag into something more. Traditions often change over time, and Friendsgiving is a reflection of the social and cultural waves millennials were creating in the 2010s. >> I feel like Friendsgiving is the most millennial concept to ever exist. It's like, [music] okay, uh, during the recession, uh, people getting married later or not getting married, your friends or your family well into your 30s. like this is a very millennial and probably now Gen Z concept um of just delaying these traditional markers of adulthood which is you know buying a house to then host Thanksgiving in for your nuclear and extended family where it's like no like the millennial tradition is like staying in your rented apartment and hosting a potluck for your friends. During that time, millennials were more racially and ethnically diverse than previous generations, more likely to be socially liberal, and the first generation to fully embrace social media. With millennials redefining culture and making new traditions, Friendsgiving grew into a celebration where you gathered with people outside your given family when you couldn't or didn't want to go home. Friendsgiving is just such a great way to reinvent old traditions. Even if you know you don't have this beautiful colonial house that you think you're supposed to have when you're like a grown-up when you're watching like holiday movies or you're trying to recreate holidays that you had when you were a kid. It's this nice way to sort of do Thanksgiving and celebrating where you're at and with the people that you want to celebrate with.