Friendsgiving: Celebrate Stress-Free With Your Pals

Thanksgiving was originally celebrated in 1621 by the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Native Americans as they came together to celebrate the harvest. Today we use it as an excuse to gather with family and remember what we’re thankful for that year. You probably spend it with your family. This year, consider spending it with friends. Sure, spending it with your family is great but you never have more fun than when you’re amongst friends.

To throw the perfect Friendsgiving celebration, you’ll need some preparation:

1. Gather the Squad
You can’t have a Friendsgiving without friends, obviously. Make sure you send out the request to friends early so they can accommodate. Since a lot of people go home early for Thanksgiving, you want to catch them extra early.

2. Divvy Out Responsibilities
Food might be even more important than friends for Friendsgiving. You have to decide who’s going to bring what for dinner because otherwise you have to do all the cooking by yourself. Determine who is the most responsible of your friends to cook the turkey. You don’t want to give the job to your flaky friend and spend Thanksgiving without any turkey.

3. Keep It Interesting
Turkey is a Thanksgiving staple but if you’re all planning on going home for Thanksgiving anyway, why not have an early Friendsgiving with a fun menu. Instead of the traditional dishes, craft a menu of all of your friends favorite foods. They’ll be thrilled to share it with the rest of the group and you’ll learn a little more about your pals over dinner.

4. Play Some Games
After dinner, make sure you have some fun activities to do with your pals. Apples to Apples is fun but Cards Against Humanity is for those with a more unique sense of humor. If you’d rather not drop any cash on games, write the names of celebrities on slips of paper and take turns trying to get your team to guess the celeb. If that’s too much work, head to Clairmont’s game room to watch TV on the plasma.

5. Make It A No Tech Dinner
Sure, it’s fun to document your time at dinner with your pals. But what are you going to do when everyone is gathered together around the dinner table with their faces buried in their phones. If your friends are reluctant, you can buy this phone jail cell to prevent them from diving into a Twitter hole. Instead of sharing the dinner with people who aren’t there, why not share it with the people who are actually there. Appreciate it while you can!

6. Don’t Stress
This isn’t some high class affair. If someone can’t make it, the turkey burns, or you drop cranberry sauce all over the carpet, it’s not a big deal. Just laugh it off and get that spot cleaner. You’ll look back on the memories with much more fondness than you will anger at the mistakes.

How do you do Friendsgiving? Share your traditions with us on Facebook and Twitter!