'Chosen family:' Friendsgiving continues to rise in popularity

No matter what the celebration looks like, Friendsgiving brings friends together to laugh, bond and enjoy their time as a chosen family.

Friendsgiving usually takes place during the weekend before or after Thanksgiving, and sometimes it includes guests bringing their favorite foods, sometimes it’s in a restaurant, other times it’s mostly alcohol with a few snacks.

There was a surge in popularity for the bonus holiday in 2013. Ten years later, it has become a tradition for many, with Gen Z and millennials leading the charge. According to a 2021 Collage Group report, about 40% of Gen Z and Millennials celebrate the holiday.

“I think in some ways the Millennial and Gen Z generations are connecting more with their peers than the older generations,” said Carla Bevins, associate teaching professor of business management communication at the Tepper School of Business of Carnegie Mellon University. “They’re more likely to be around their friends than with their family just geographically. (Friendsgiving) allows Gen Z and millennials to really shape their own holiday experiences.”

Bevins said that she has witnessed how highly her students hold their friendships, and how they rely on each other as an extension of a support system. From a broader standpoint, Bevins said that she has seen a cultural shift with how younger generations have chosen to redefine and personalize their own traditions. Younger generations also have technology and social media to maintain that connection over time. She said some of her students will be including their peers in Friendsgiving celebrations via Zoom and FaceTime.

Bevins celebrates her own Friendsgiving and describes the event as a cozy potluck.

“I know for me, with Thanksgiving, we kind of get bound by some of those historic or family obligations and traditions, and with Friendsgiving, it’s more about being flexible,” Bevins said. “It’s a lot about fellowship and being with each other and enjoying each others’ company because we want to be around each other.”

Along with being able to mold Friendsgiving to fit their ideal celebration, Bevins said a sense of maturity can come from hosting a Friendsgiving and handling the communication and problem-solving that comes with it.

“On one hand, it’s one of the first things that you can start adulting with,” Bevins said. “When you think about the interpersonal skills that go with it — the hosting, handling unexpected challenges — you really have to be adaptable. When people hit that 18 to 25 age range, there’s that responsibility there that you can take on without having as many high stakes family relationships with it.”

With its rising popularity, there’s a debate about how the holiday started. When the word was officially added to the dictionary in 2020, Merriam-Webster credited the earliest use of the term Friendsgiving to a 2007 tweet. Some people credit the show “Friends” for inspiring the concept of spending the holiday with friends. Based on when the holiday gained popularity, others argue that a 2011 ad campaign by Baileys Irish Cream liqueur gave Friendsgiving a national media platform.

Local businesses such as Green Beacon Gallery in Greensburg have taken to recognizing the bonus holiday. Gallery owner Steven Harrold and the gallery’s creative director, Phil Harrold, will be hosting an afternoon potluck and an annual showing of the “Thankskilling” films Nov 19. Showing the movies became a tradition after the brothers recognized that there weren’t many Thanksgiving movies.

“It’s a Thanksgiving movie,” Phil Harrold said. “It’s a horror movie, but it’s incredibly silly. That’s our proclivity towards it. It’s just bonkers, and we laugh a whole lot when we watch it.”

They have hosted the event every year since their opening in 2020. The brothers have begun to send Friendsgiving invitations to their personal friends in addition to posting about it on their social media and website.

“We want people to feel like they have a place to go in town if they have nowhere else,” Harrold said. “We say that we all have our blood families and stuff, but this is like our chosen family that we like to spend holidays with. If we can extend that opportunity to anybody who doesn’t have that, then we can all find joy in this.”

They are encouraging guests to bring their favorite Thanksgiving dish and to dress in whatever they feel most comfortable in.

Lety Landaverde-Guerrero, 23, has celebrated Friendsgiving since she was 15 and living in Bridgeville with her parents. She started by celebrating with her friends a few days after Thanksgiving. She said that being old enough to cook for herself and having a core group of friends is what helped make a tradition from the first celebration possible.

“It primarily started because in school we had the entire weekend of Thanksgiving off, so a lot of my friends and I thought it would be a good idea to get together and bring some of our families’ Thanksgiving leftovers,” Landaverde-Guerrero said.

She now lives in Pittsburgh’s Shadyside neighborhood, and Friendsgiving has taken on a dominant role for her after she and her family grew distant.

“Friendsgiving is also really beneficial for college students that can’t go home because they’re international students or out-of-state students,” Landaverde-Guerrero said. “We had a pretty big (Friendsgiving) one year because there were so many international students that weren’t able to go home because of travel restrictions, or they just hadn’t celebrated Thanksgiving before because their country of origin doesn’t celebrate.”

Landaverde-Guerrero said her Friendsgivings have looked different throughout the years. One year, a friend hosted in his restaurant and had the celebration catered with his food. Another year, she traveled to Boston to spend the holiday with friends living there. Most years, however, Landaverde-Guerrero spends Friendsgiving in pajamas with a small group, including some of her siblings, and practices new recipes.

“It allows us to get together and really appreciate our friend groups,” Landaverde-Guerrero said.

Friendsgiving is a holiday that Landaverde-Guerrero holds close to her heart. Over the years of celebrations, she has been able to form her own traditions with her chosen family and take a step into adulthood by prioritizing the things she finds important.

“Thanksgiving is predominantly about gratitude, so naturally there’s going to be an inclination to feel grateful just because that’s what the holiday is about,” Landaverde-Guerrero said. “I also think that I’m the kind of person that really prioritizes my relationships. I think at the end of the day, all we really have are the bonds that we’ve formed with other people and ourselves. I’ve always placed a large importance on friendship.”