All You Need to Know About Friendsgiving

FRIENDSGIVING: it may be the fastest growing holiday in America. As you might have guessed, Friendsgiving is the celebration of Thanksgiving dinner with your friends. Some celebrate it on the Wednesday before or the Friday after Thanksgiving Day in order to spend Thursday with family, but for many college students and young professionals who won't be traveling home for the holiday, Friendsgiving is a wonderful stand-in for the more traditional meal. It is Thanksgiving without the baggage, the family tension, and the pent-up expectations. At Friendsgiving, no one will judge you if you can't cook a turkey. Though it's unclear exactly when Friendsgiving began, it was culturally popularized by the first Friends Thanksgiving Episode (Season 1: The One Where Underdog Gets Away). For a full Friends Thanksgiving Marathon Guide, click here.

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Since then, Friendsgiving has been embraced by millennials as an opportunity to create the Thanksgiving they want with their friends. Many have used the opportunity to put more emphasis on the "giving" in Friendsgiving. In an NPR special, Clay Dunn, the chief communications officer for Share Our Strength, a hunger nonprofit, asked listeners to leverage their holiday goodwill by turning their friendly gatherings into fundraising opportunities to fight childhood hunger. Share Our Strength has an online tool that allows you to register to host an event, set a fundraising goal, create a donation page and share the link with friends. Or you could come up with creative giveaways, like a signature cocktail for donors, or auctioning off your talents like baking or present-wrapping in exchange for small donations.

If putting the "giving" in Friendsgiving sounds like something you would be interested in, Share Our Strength has several resources, including templates for table name cards and a Pinterest board for cooking and decorating inspiration, too. Donations will go towards Share Our Strength's No Kid Hungry campaign, which supports various initiatives to address food insecurity among America's children, as well as to programs run by its partners.

But as we acknowledged above, Friendsgiving is and should be a no-stress holiday where you will not be judged for not being able to cook a turkey or throw an impromptu low-scale fundraising event. If putting together a small giveaway or collecting donations isn't in your time budget, simply keep the giving spirit in your heart, and consider bookmarking this idea for next year.

THE RULES OF FRIENDSGIVING:

If you are throwing your own Friendsgiving and need some pointers, here are the 17 Rules of Friendsgiving according to Buzzfeed. This article lays out who should bring what dishes (and how much booze) to the meal, and has helpful recipe suggestions, wine pairings, and reminders about things we millennials tend to forget about, like bringing the ice.

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And, if all of this seems overwhelming, our friends at Spoon University St. Andrews have put together a guide of 9 Thanksgiving Foods You Can Make With Just A Microwave. The article begins, "Thanksgiving is a day for being thankful that your favorite pair of jeans come in a size up." Enjoy!

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hat are your Thanksgiving plans this year? Let us know in the comments below!