Thanksgiving Playbook, Episode 1: Wait, Is This a Costume Party!?
You know that scene from Stranger Things: Season 2, when the boys show up to school fully decked out as Ghostbusters and are completely mortified when they realize no one else is wearing a costume?
“Guys. Guys! GUYS! Why is no one else wearing costumes?”
When the purpose for our gathering is vague or we leave it up to our guests for interpretation, we run the risk of accidentally throwing a costume party.
Priya Parker’s wisdom in The Art of Gathering is invaluable. “There are so many good reasons for coming together that often we don’t know precisely why we are doing so. You are not alone if you skip the first step in convening people meaningfully…When we skip this step, we often let old or faulty assumptions about why we gather dictate the form of our gatherings.”
Thanksgiving looks and feels different to each person based on their family of origin and experiences. Chances are our guests have predetermined masks ready to put on. We can help our guests know how to show up when we establish a clear purpose and give appropriate cues for our gathering.
“Because it’s Thanksgiving” may seem like a purpose; it is not.
Parker continues: “Specificity is a crucial ingredient. The more focused and particular a gathering is, the more narrowly it frames itself and the more passion it arouses.”
With this in mind, a potential purpose statement for a Thanksgiving gathering might be “to slow down and take delight in the bounty of good food and friends” or “to break down barriers of relationship among my family members by inviting them to share stories about good food.”
For the past decade, our Thanksgiving table has been filled by friends and friends-of-friends who don’t have family nearby. Oftentimes, our guests are meeting one another for the first time. Our purpose has been to “cultivate a welcoming space to intentionally indulge in good food and new friends.”
Indulge is an important word for us. Thanksgiving is a celebration of bounty, of overabundance, of more. And, since so many of our guests are new of each other, we want to cultivate a space where they can indulge in making new friends as well.
A clearly defined purpose acts as a “bouncer,” helping us decide what goes into our gathering and what stays out. It may also impact who goes into our gathering. For us, our invitations have been extended to people we knew didn’t have family nearby, those who are new to the city, or those who were estranged from their families.
Once guests are invited and confirmed, we send out an invitation with some guidelines and requests to cue our guests to our purpose.
Request #1: Bring a dish.
The first request is to sign up to bring a dish that is meaningful to you. Perhaps it’s a dish you grew up eating for Thanksgiving meals or one you’ve created or perfected. It’s a small thing, but this way, everyone has skin in the game.
Request #2: Bring yourself.
The second request is to bring yourself. This may seem obvious, but it bears special attention. Thanksgiving is more than a meal, and we want our guests, as much as possible, to show up without their ready-made masks.
If feasting with friends is in fact, as McKelvey states, an “act of war,” then it requires preparation. Every gathering is a fight against forces that would isolate and diminish us, so we want to notice and attend to the diversity of what we are bringing with us—the sorrows, tensions, joys, hopes, and fears. And so we invite our guests to pause in the days before Thanksgiving to consider what they are bringing.
We curate a list of suggested readings from McKelvey's liturgies and send them to our guests ahead of Thanksgiving. (You can find many of them for free on everymomentholy.com/liturgies. But really, you should just buy all three volumes. We make no money off promoting his book, but should probably start asking for commission at this point.)
Here are some of the ones we’ve curated in past years:
For Missing Someone (II, 241)
For the Hardship of Holidays and Special Days (II, 287)
For Embracing both Joy & Sorrow (II, 298)
For Beginning to Rebuild (II, 320)
Thanksgiving at the Return of Joy (II, 322)
For Those Who Feel Awkward in Social Gatherings (I, 171)
Long before you pull out the dusty plates and polish the silver (literal or proverbial), we encourage you to start with establishing a purpose for your gathering so you can communicate to your guests why they’re showing up and how to show up (no, Thanksgiving is not a costume party).
What if you aren’t hosting a meal but are the guest at someone else’s table? We’ll talk more about that when we tackle the meaning and nature of hospitality in an upcoming episode, so stay tuned!
Read our next Thanksgiving Playbook post:
Episode 2, The Hobbits Got it Right
