“Friendsgiving,” a portmanteau of “friends” and “Thanksgiving,” is a commonly celebrated event among Millennials who want to get together with friends but don’t want to use the typically familial day of Thanksgiving to do it. If you want to get together with your friends this Thanksgiving season, you might instead pivot to Friendsgiving. Here’s how you and your friends can have a great Friendsgiving this year.
1. Decide on a Date
The first thing to do is decide on a date for your Friendsgiving event. Typically, Friendsgiving events happen either the week before or two weeks before Thanksgiving proper. This allows you to get close enough to Thanksgiving that your event can have all the trimmings of Thanksgiving, but with a bit of distance, with the weekend timing making it easier to invite everyone.
While less common due to the possibility of encroaching a bit on the Christmas season, it could also be possible to host your Friendsgiving event the week after Thanksgiving. In this situation, you might want to consider making your Friendsgiving event a dual Thanksgiving/Christmas event.
2. Figure Out the Guest List
Next, decide on who you want to invite. If you already have a dedicated friend group, this question is pretty easy, but if your friends typically aren’t well known to each other, you might need to make sure you have a list of friends you think will actually get along.
Remember, Friendsgiving is supposed to be a time to connect with people and have a good time with friends. It’s probably not a good idea to invite a bunch of strangers to your Friendsgiving; you’ll want to make sure everyone knows each other at least a little bit, even if they’re not extremely good friends.
3. Create a Group Chat or Other Method of Discussion
The next step is to make sure you’re able to talk to the people you invited to your Friendsgiving. Unlike with other experiences, including Thanksgiving, this isn’t usually something you can just invite people to, then have them show up unprepared. Friendsgiving is about coming together as friends and having a good time. If you don’t know everyone’s contact information, PeopleFinders can help.
This is especially helpful if you want to make it easy to get in contact with people you’re friends with but you don’t usually text, email or generally chat with. You can perform a people search, which will allow you to find phone numbers and email addresses, so you can start getting together your Friendsgiving experience as early as possible.
4. Create Some Fun Experiences
There are a number of different ways to have a good time at a Friendsgiving event. Consider some of these experiences to really up the ante at your Friendsgiving event, especially if not everyone at the event knows each other well and you need to break the ice:
- Play a card game.
- Make a pumpkin keg.
- Create fake wishbones so everyone has one.
- Exchange small gifts.
- Make a playlist for the event.
If you can create these experiences beforehand, it can alleviate a lot of the anxiety many people have around events.
5. Assign the Food Potluck-Style
This is one of the biggest differences between Friendsgiving and Thanksgiving. On Thanksgiving, typically someone will be chosen to host Thanksgiving, and they’ll be the one to make the food. However, Friendsgiving is typically much more potluck-style. Instead of having one person prepare everything, everyone will bring a number of different dishes.
Make sure you assign different dishes to different people before the actual event happens. Otherwise, you risk the age-old potluck problem of five people bringing napkins and no one bringing mashed potatoes. Additionally, depending on your friend group, you may want to purchase a turkey instead of assigning one, as the process of roasting a turkey can be expensive and difficult.
Conclusion
A Friendsgiving event can be an amazing way to connect with friends before or after the Thanksgiving season. However, organizing a Friendsgiving event can be more difficult than you initially thought. If you want to make sure you’re getting the most out of your Friendsgiving, make sure you turn to PeopleFinders to make connecting a breeze.
Image Attribution: Stephanie Frey – stock.adobe.com
