Celebrating Fakesgiving

by Gina Rich

One November, a friend and I were texting about our Thanksgiving plans. She was knee-deep in recipes as she prepared to celebrate the holiday with relatives. “I have to make ten pounds of potatoes!” she wrote. I smiled, considering how different our holidays would be. My family of four was planning a quiet Thanksgiving dinner on our own.

In the past, this kind of conversation would have made me feel sad and jealous. Because my extended family is spread throughout the country, we don’t usually see each other on actual holidays. Crammed airports and exorbitant fares make it a Herculean feat for us to converge in the same location during peak travel weeks.

When my kids were little, I worried they were missing out on traditions like making Christmas cookies with their grandparents or running around with cousins on Thanksgiving morning. I swallowed my envy when mom friends shared plans of celebrations with dozens of family members, most of whom lived within driving distance.

“It’s not fair,” I’d complain to my husband. “Why does everyone else have family so close by?”

He reminded me, gently, that many people were in similar situations. And over time, my family found meaning in our own traditions. On Thanksgiving night, we go to the movies. We love making fondue on Christmas Eve.

Still, those efforts didn’t banish the loneliness I often felt around the holidays. I wanted the big party, the happy chaos, the curated photos on Instagram with different generations celebrating together.

Ultimately, it was my father, a travel fanatic with a penchant for bargain hunting, who offered a solution: Why not celebrate the holiday on a different date that worked for everyone’s schedules and budgets? Gathering on the officially recognized holiday was unimportant, he argued.

“Just buy a $10 calendar and write ‘Thanksgiving’ on whatever date we pick instead,” he suggested. “Cheaper than spending $500 on that holiday week flight!” 

As usual, I couldn’t argue with his logic. Shortly thereafter, our family began using the term Fakesgiving – Fake Thanksgiving – to describe our new tradition of celebrating on a different date. Both my father and sister have claimed credit for adding the term to our family’s vernacular, but I’ll call it a serendipitous meeting of the minds. 

For several years now, when the autumn leaves turn crisp, we start an e-mail thread to suggest dates and locations, with someone usually volunteering to serve as the “host city.” So far, we’ve celebrated in Chicago, Milwaukee, and Boston. 

Sometimes the day features turkey, stuffing, and all the trappings of a typical holiday feast, but on other occasions, we forgo convention and feast on lasagna or pizza. We always adhere strictly to a cherished family tradition of providing at least seven different dessert options. 

Last year, 13 of us – eight adults and five kids – gathered in Boston during the first weekend of December. We spent a lazy Saturday strolling posh Newbury Street, the bracing air and twinkling storefront lights hinting at the festivities to come. While the younger kids browsed for toys and books, my teenage daughters happily waited in a long, snaking line to shop for trendy hoodies at Brandy Melville. The adults grabbed overpriced lattes, and my dad purchased a thick stack of cookies from Levain Bakery to fortify our dessert offerings.

For our Fakesgiving feast, we ordered salmon, chicken parmesan, and pasta from a local Italian restaurant. As we waited for our food to be delivered, my daughters enjoyed some rare 1:1 time with their younger cousins, indulging them with stories about magical animals and even teaching the 18-month-old to utter the slang phrase, “Six seven!” 

When the food arrived, all the women tried not to gape at the caterer, a striking young man whose taut biceps strained beneath a crisp white shirt.

“Mom, that man looks like Prince Fiyero from Wicked,” observed my sister’s 10-year-old son matter-of-factly, oblivious to our attempts to play it cool. Later, my father told us he’d slipped the caterer an $80 tip – $40 for the food “and $40 to stay away from my daughters and granddaughters.”

After dinner we flopped on the couches in the living room for a raucous board game that had our normally stoic father gasping with laughter. My brother snapped a perfectly timed photo, giving it the caption, “Dad losing it.”

“That was the best day ever,” my 16-year-old declared – high praise from a teenage girl.

In the end, Fakesgiving has fulfilled everything I’d worried I was missing all those years: a shared meal, a festive atmosphere, plenty of inside jokes, and most importantly, time to connect with family. It turns out that gathering on a specific calendar date wasn’t what mattered. I can’t wait for the to-be-determined day when we’ll celebrate our next Fakesgiving.