NORTHAMPTON — As Bowen Kirwood and Ashley Barton prepared turkey and mashed potatoes, and set up for a crowded dining room in their apartment, the scene could have been mistaken for the lead-up to a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. But it wasn’t relatives crowding into the apartment on Monday — instead, the couple was hosting “Friendsgiving.”
The concept is just what it sounds like: A Thanksgiving dinner shared by friends, rather than family, usually in the days leading up to or after Thanksgiving. If the coinage itself is an indication of popularity, the occasion is also on the rise — the term first drew interest early in the decade, according to Google Trends data, and has spiked in recent years.
Some who celebrate the unofficial holiday, such as Kirwood, see Friendsgiving as a time to recognize that family ties aren’t the only relationships to celebrate during this time of year.
“It’s almost like you do a Thanksgiving that’s a special event to most people with your chosen family, rather than doing it with the family you were born with,” Kirwood said.
The dinner also tends to be more of a low-stress occasion, he added.
“Being able to do it in a casual setting is probably very helpful for a lot of people,” Kirwood said. “It’s more like a party than it is like a sit-down dinner.”
Kirwood said that he attended Friendsgiving dinners “for quite some time” before he and Barton held their own get-together this year, hosting around 20 people and their small chihuahua, Pepper, who is kind of Insta-famous. The dog’s Instagram handle is peppersparty — the account currently has over 9,500 followers who “like” Pepper’s various napping moments. On Monday, Pepper wore a festive red sweater.
Kirwood and Barton prepared most of the main courses while guests brought side dishes, with food ranging from traditional fare to vegan or vegetarian options like acorn squash and broccoli-stuffing casserole. Kirwood, a manager and bartender at The Green Room in Northampton, mixed a Port Wine Punch for the occasion.
“It was a great time,” Kirwood said, noting that there was just enough food and space for everyone. “It was fun to pack everyone into that tiny room.”
Many of the guests attend traditional Thanksgiving dinners with their families as well, Kirwood said, but some of his friends hold Friendsgiving dinners on the holiday itself to allow those without family in the area to celebrate on Thanksgiving Day.
Smith College senior Kate Carruth, who is from Northern California, expressed similar thoughts about Friendsgiving, describing the gathering as “spending time with our families away from families, our home away from home.”
It’s a sentiment that she feels many people in her generation share.
“I think that a lot of people my age view friends as family,” she added, “so it would be weird to celebrate without family.”
Carruth gathered at a friend’s on-campus apartment on Sunday with around six people, all fellow Smithies, where they shared an all-vegetarian Friendsgiving meal featuring dishes such as oven-baked potatoes and pecan pie. Though the students go to the same college, they did not become friends until they studied abroad together in France for a year. During this time, they would meet weekly to cook a big meal together — a tradition that continued when they returned to Smith. With this weekly dinner in place, it seemed natural to hold a Friendsgiving, Carruth said.
Not everyone is won over by Friendsgiving, with the concept dismissed by some as an unnecessary portmanteau or millennial fad. CNN Eatocracy founding editor Kat Kinsman once wrote that the word “doesn’t roll off the tongue like ‘turducken’ or ‘cronut’ or ‘spork,’” has “been awkwardly co-opted by advertisers,” and implies that a Thanksgiving with friends “is somehow not a real Thanksgiving.”
But while the holiday is unofficial, the word may be on the path to formal recognition. In 2016, Merriam-Webster Dictionary highlighted Friendsgiving as a “word we’re watching” — a term that, while not currently included in the dictionary, is growing in popularity. Peter Sokolowski, editor at large of Merriam-Webster, said that he sees Friendsgiving as a contender for earning a spot in the Springfield-based dictionary.
“This is a word that a lot of people use,” Sokolowski said. “If it is increasing in use — if people are using it more and more every year — then it’s very likely to be entered into the dictionary.”
Merriam-Webster tracks the first known in-print usage of the word back to 2007, according to a post on the dictionary’s website, and “the term started showing up in edited prose fairly quickly after its appearance on the web,” making its way into lifestyle pieces in the following two years. Its popularity picked up dramatically after it was used in a Bailey’s Irish Cream ad campaign and “The Real Housewives of New Jersey” reality TV show in 2011, according to Merriam-Webster.
When considering the adoption of a new word, the dictionary looks at three factors: Widespread use; long-term use; and “meaningful use,” indicating that people use the word “in the same way to mean roughly the same thing,” Sokolowski said, adding that the third factor is “certainly true with Friendsgiving.” The term is also a portmanteau, or merging of two words, which Sokolowski said commonly increases a word’s success.
“One of the helpful things about this kind of combination or blend is that it becomes transparent,” Sokolowksi said, “so you can hear it for the first time and know intuitively what’s meant by it.”
And despite its associations, it’s not just younger generations holding Friendsgivings: While talking to her parents over the phone recently, Carruth found out that they had participated in a Friendsgiving as well.
Whether or not the word gains official clout, Friendsgiving revelers see it as holding a natural place in the holiday season, especially when considering the stresses that come along with the time of year.
“I think that as the season starts to change, we all feel a little bit isolated,” Kirwood said. “The hours start to get shorter, there’s less sunlight, it’s colder. The only time people can really feel less isolated is when they go out — and when the sun’s down, it’s harder to get out.”
Carruth also noted that for some, Friendsgiving can be a bright spot during a hectic time.
“It’s a great way to spend time with friends and family, and celebrated right before the holidays without the same craziness of Thanksgiving with your real family,” Carruth said. “I love Friendsgiving. I look forward to it every year.”
Jacquelyn Voghel can be reached at jvoghel@gazettenet.com.