How to Celebrate Friendsgiving

 In CGT Blog

Thanksgiving is an American holiday steeped in tradition. The turkey and all the fixings, the mashed potatoes, those awkward family conversations …ahh, it really feels like the holiday season. As much as we love our annual catch up with Aunt Edna over the bread basket, we are also big fans of the holiday that falls around the same time as Thanksgiving each year, Friendsgiving.

In recent years it has become an increasingly popular holiday to celebrate. The exact origins of Friendsgiving are unknown (but there’s a lot of evidence that it was inspired by Friends.) Friendsgiving is pretty simple: it’s meant to be a Thanksgiving meal spent with your friends, eating tasty food potluck style, toasting to the health and happiness of everyone and giving thanks for each other and that there can be one less holiday event with “what are you doing with your life?” questions.

If you can’t make it home for Thanksgiving or you also want to celebrate a day early or a day after with some friends, we know it’ll be worth it!

Below we’ve rounded up the steps to a successful Friendsgiving … the most important thing? Don’t forget the wine!

Prepare the guest list and send out the invites!

You want your guests to take your Friendsgiving seriously, so send out invitations a few weeks in advance so that they have time to plan for it and so that you get an estimate on how many people to expect. It’s always better to be prepared! Get creative with your invitations and your guests will definitely want to come!

Plan the menu

Once you have a good idea of how many are coming to your shindig, put together a menu and assign meal items to your guests. As far as the turkey goes, it is traditional that the host cooks it so that it doesn’t have to travel. The rest of the menu can be very traditional, or it could also be a medley of options, it just depends on the crowd.

A must have? The wine! Thanksgiving meals have a lot of different flavors going on, so we suggest a couple of reds and whites for the different tastes of your guests. We’ve got five quick and easy tips for how to pair wine and (Thanksgiving) food here.

The Day of: keep calm and carry on

To ensure your Friendsgiving goes off without a hitch, it’s important to prepare as much as you can before the day of the event as far as food goes. But on the day of, it’s all about getting those last-minute details out of the way. Part of the fun of Friendsgiving is that it’s a group effort to get the meal on the table, so embrace the potluck style Thanksgiving meal and ask everyone to bring a dish to pass. It’s your party – and there are no rules! Feel free to make the dinner as complex or simple as you want – from wine and cheese to casseroles and gravy.

Go ahead and make your table extra festive with some fall decorations. The level of sophistication with the table settings can completely vary. Do you want your finest china on the table or should they have the turkey paper plates? We do suggest stemware for the wine (we want it to taste great!) but everything else is up to you.

After a great evening with your makeshift family, make sure to send your friends home with a sober driver and plenty of leftovers!

Will you host a Friendsgiving this year? We want to see your pictures! Post them on our Facebook page and let us know what you serve; bonus points if you pour some of our wine!

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