On November 20th my friends and I had a Friendsgiving. It was my first year having a Friendsgiving and I just wanted to take everyone through the journey of  Why you should consider having a Friendsgiving. But where did this (mostly) beloved pseudo-holiday come from? Many people point to the show Friends, which aired from 1994 to 2004, as the inspiration for contemporary Friendsgivings. Each year, the Central Perk gang — for the most part inexplicably untethered by familial obligation — got up to do crazy things in the name of staying friends through each year. There’s the one where Joey gets a turkey stuck on his head, the one where they all play football, and the one where Rachel creates a terrible combination of English trifle and shepherd’s pie. To the millennials and gen z  raised on the show’s constant reruns, it looked pretty fun. Even if the food didn’t always turn out great.

For me, and my friends, that was where our inspiration came from, and with me and my friend Sarah taking on the role of Monica to put it all together. Planning a Friendsgiving is probably the easiest part about the entire thanksgiving debacle. The whole process of Figuring out who can bring what and who can host is so much easier Because of your friends and usually hang out together and talk on a  daily basis. You know what each friend can get and what each friend’s skills are. It makes it easier than regular thanksgiving where you either are not helping with the process of making the food but have to host, or making the food and not hosting, or even making the food and hosting. Also because of your friends, it causes you to not have to be so formal. During Thanksgiving, you usually have to dress up and be polite to your parents and aunts, and relatives even if you dislike them or if they dislike you. When you have a Friendsgiving you are given the choice to not have to dress up and seeing as you are friends in the first family drama place you know that you are dining with people who are truly thankful to have you in their lives.

They’re plenty of reasons for people of all ages to love an event that takes the best parts of Thanksgiving which are — eating, drinking, being with people you love — and taking away the stress, racist origins/ sexist origins, and forced familial interaction. And when you think about it, there’s really no other holiday that champions friendship in the same way. The stress of thanksgiving leaves when you are dancing and listening to music and dancing with the people that love you the most so maybe next time you’re at your dinner table and you’re contemplating the reason why you are even hanging with your family for thanksgiving maybe call up some of your closest friends and have a Friendsgiving