How to Plan a Progressive Friendsgiving!
In recent years, it has become a popular activity to get together with your friends to celebrate Thanksgiving. Traditionally, people spend Thanksgiving with their family, and so this new trend has added another holiday to our calendars! We choose a day around Thanksgiving and get together with our friends for food, drinks, fun, and celebration!
There is also another trend that has become popular, a Progressive Dinner. Progressive dinners were popular in the 70’s and with our generations’ Pinterest obsession, these dinners have also made comeback in our society. A Progressive Dinner is a multi-course meal where each home hosts one course, and the friends travel from house to house enjoying a different course at each location. So, if we combine our Friendsgiving with a Progressive Dinner Party, you have yourself an excellent experience!
Planning the Menu
Depending on how many people are on the guest list, you could have as many courses as you want, but typically it would be about four or five courses at four or five houses. This works especially well with neighbors so that everyone is close, and no one is driving! (Golf carts work well, too!). Traditionally the courses would be:
- Appetizers / charcuterie boards
- Salad, soup, and breads
- Traditional side dishes
- Turkey and Stuffing
- Coffee and Dessert
Of course, you could spice things up and have cocktails and wine as a part of your menu also. Another variation is for the last house to be where all of the friends gather after dinner to play games to end the night. Why not keep the fun going?
This is a perfect way to celebrate because each host is only responsible for one part of the menu. All diners can experience different homes, different ideas, and a lot of variety! Everyone has fun moving from place to place, and no one is stuck with the entire load of the clean-up. This can be a fun tradition to start with your group of friends or your neighborhood friends.
When to Start Planning
When we did this in the past, we started talking about it right after Halloween so everyone could start preparing and getting excited! Naturally everyone has different talents and things they enjoy, so each host chose what they felt would be their best contribution to the party. In the end, we enjoyed fantastic food, exciting anticipation of each house, fun conversation and travel with our friends, and absolute amazement of all the creativity everyone brought to their special table.
It is an experience that everyone will cherish and talk about for a long time … until next year!
