The War on Thanksgiving

In recent years, the concept of “Friendsgiving” has become popular in mainstream culture, particularly among young people. But by stripping the faith-based element out of the name, this apparently innocent rechristening of Thanksgiving may actually be a subtle subversion of the traditional Thanksgiving holiday that is an important piece of our nation’s identity.

Traditions surrounding holidays are flexible, but renaming them is no minor detail. It’s not like changing the name of a lame, left-wing cable news network from one set of initials to another (looking at you, MS NOW). A name change is usually intended to change the meaning of the event.

Most conservatives realize that when it comes to name changes in other contexts. They complain when schools call Christmas break “holiday break” and when companies demand their employees say “season’s greetings,” as if there is some cultural significance to the winter season over other seasons. They fight against the tendency to only say “Fourth of July” but never “Independence Day.” And they reject turning Columbus Day into “Indigenous Peoples’ Day.”

The reason they complain about these is that calling Christmas the winter holiday or refusing to let employees wish a “Merry Christmas” is an attack on both Christian and American culture. The refusal to acknowledge Independence Day is almost always a rejection of the good of our nation, almost always because of a fixation on the darker moments of American history. 

Those who reject Columbus Day never do so because they don’t want to celebrate Italian heritage, which is how the holiday began. Instead, they transparently work to downplay and even demonize the brave European explorers who ventured out into the unknown and connected the world like never before. Changing the name of the holiday is a way of delegitimizing our nation.

One might think that Americans might be used to this anti-traditional schtick by now, but even many normally wary Americans have succumbed to the description of events this week as “Friendsgiving,” which even uber-liberal NPR calls a “made-up holiday.”

But what exactly is a “Friendsgiving” celebration?

In its article on the topic, “Where Does Friendsgiving Come From?” Merriam-Webster says that the term’s print debut is 2007, “where it shows up in Usenet posts and on Twitter to refer without explanation to an informal meal with friends.” 

The article argues that the notion of Friendsgiving has been around for centuries, but hones in on the 1973 A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, along with many other television shows in the years after, depicting a group of friends celebrating Thanksgiving.

It’s a clever argument, but it ultimately fails to justify changing the name. It is true that many people have celebrated Thanksgiving, as they do other major holidays, with friends. It is also true, as Ashley Fetters wrote in a 2018 Atlantic article on the trendy made-up holiday, that Americans have often focused on coming home at Thanksgiving (especially as Americans became more mobile), but celebrations with friends and community have always been a part of it. Thanksgiving, after all, was never simply a biological family affair.

The tradition of Thanksgiving came from the English habit of calling for national days of thanksgiving for gifts given by God. In early America, this habit continued both among members of the Church of England and the Puritans, some of whom we know as “the Pilgrims.”

The event that Americans eventually settled on as the semi-official “first Thanksgiving” was a festival being celebrated by the residents of Plymouth Colony in 1621. When the Wampanoags, with whom Plymouth Colony had a treaty for mutual defense, showed up, perhaps after hearing gunshots fired ceremonially, they too were welcomed to the festival. Given that the Wampanoag, like the English, had a tradition of celebrations of giving thanks, they were meeting on common philosophical ground.

There is no doubt that the events depicted were more complex than what many of us were taught—the history of our relations with the various tribes was often bloody and sad. But what matters is the philosophical ground beneath them. As a nation, we have continued to celebrate a day of national Thanksgiving for the blessings given by God. The focus is on gratitude to God as a nation, not a demonstration of whom we feel closest to this year.

Changing the name to “Friendsgiving” changes the original focus of Thanksgiving. The Merriam-Webster article’s subheading is, “Escape your family and celebrate with your friends.” A 2021 New York Times article highlights the popularity of Friendsgiving celebrations with people who identify as LGBTQ. The focus of the people interviewed is on finding a “chosen family” and celebrating “belonging.” The author describes it as “a time not only to celebrate newfound bonds, but also to reject old culinary traditions that feel out of sync.”

Even worse is a 2024 article by an anthropologist at Hunter College who celebrates Friendsgiving as the use of the “template of the Thanksgiving ritual — a communal meal of thanking” as an opportunity for “reimagining it to reflect today’s values of inclusivity, fluidity, and cultural hybridity.” Friendsgiving is for him an act of “resistance” and an opportunity to think about “decolonization.”

While it’s true that many people who hold Friendsgiving parties are not as radical as some of these examples, the problem is the erasure of the real point of Thanksgiving as a holiday and a season—even for those who don’t mean to do it.

There is no doubt that belonging, friendship, and new recipes are goods, but by shearing off the “Thanks” from the “giving,” Friendsgiving celebrations neglect the very purpose of giving thanks. While some will argue that the “thanks” is simply built into or assumed in this new thing, there is precious little evidence that this is the case. Discussions of Friendsgiving celebrations almost never mention giving thanks itself—unless as part of a template to be filled in with something else.

Celebrate as many Thanksgivings as you want with whatever food you want and whatever people you want. But remember that the point is thankfulness to God for this nation and the many gifts given in it, including the family, friends, neighbors, or co-workers with whom you are celebrating.

David P. Deavel teaches at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. A past Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute, he is a Senior Contributor at The Imaginative Conservative. Follow him on X (Twitter) @davidpdeavel.