How to Thanksgiving together, virtually
Creating new moments of togetherness on November 26, 2020
Thanksgiving has long been one of my favorite holidays.
For over a decade, I hosted an annual “Twisted Thanksgiving” for my Thanksgiving orphan friends in San Francisco who didn’t have other plans for their Thursday dinner. I’d take traditional Thanksgiving ingredients and twist them up differently each year. I’d never make the same thing twice.
There were many hits over the years: turkey sisig (yum!), grilled carrot puree with saffron and maple syrup pumpkin ravioli, spicy cranberry cornbread, homemade sweet potato donuts… And there were the occasional misses. Beer can turkey with jerk seasoning sounded like a good idea — and I had the Fosters beer can to fit — but it turns out it’s not as foolproof as beer can chicken. (“Uh, turkey carpaccio, anyone?”)
We’d all sit together on the floor of my not-large apartment living room at the time, sometimes as many as 18 of us around a single blanket.
These Thanksgiving memories of crowding in together are particularly peculiar to reflect on in 2020.
I’m not going to sugarcoat the obvious. It absolutely sucks that we can’t gather safely in the ways that we are used to on Thanksgiving. But that doesn’t mean we can’t feel some moments of togetherness when we are far apart on November 26, 2020.
Since many of us are Zoomed out from the usual video call, I think it helps to twist things up a little bit to create… different experiences of feeling together.
Below are four Thanksgiving “recipes” for moments of togetherness. And I highly encourage you to twist them up.
(These recipes are partly based on activities I’ve developed over the years and are included in the upcoming book Rituals for Virtuals Meetings: Creative Ways to Engage People and Strengthen Relationships. I co-wrote this book with my friend Kursat Ozenc. More on this book coming soon! The recipes are also partly inspired by my students’ work in the Stanford d.school class Reimagining Campus Life for Today’s World in Fall 2020 — thanks everyone!)
1. Turkey Toast
Is this like avocado toast, but with turkey? Heck no! Turkey Toast is based on an activity called New Sensation, in which people explore what it’s like to experience a physical sensation together that involves touch, smell, and/or taste… when everyone is not in the same physical place. My default version of New Sensation involves bowls of ice water. But for Thanksgiving, I might try something like this with friends who are far away:
- Get on a video call together. (Don’t worry, this call won’t take long!)
- Everyone brings a piece of turkey they can eat. (Feel free to substitute other foods or drinks, but try to pick something where everyone is eating or drinking the same or similar things.)
- At the count of 3, everyone toasts your turkey like you’re toasting champagne. (Make sure the turkey doesn’t actually hit your webcam.) “1, 2, 3… turkey!”
- Then everyone puts their piece of turkey in their mouth and eats it. Verbally describe what your turkey tastes like. (Yum! Or maybe not. Depends.)
2. Thanksgiving Tour
I created an activity called Personal Tour in November 2017 because I wanted my students — half of whom were at Stanford and half of whom were in Bangkok — to get a sense of each other’s three dimensional space and a sense of each other moving in space. You can do something similar for Thanksgiving, and you don’t have to be 8,000 miles apart!
- I think this works best one-on-one. (It is possible to do in small groups.)
- Get on a video call together using your phone or tablet instead of your computer. The key thing is to use a device that you can move around with easily, preferably one that has a front camera and back camera. (You can do this with a laptop, but it’s more awkward.)
- Give each other tours of the spaces you are in on Thanksgiving. For example, you might give a tour of the different Thanksgiving dishes you’re eating. Or perhaps you might show things that are new-ish in your life, like objects from a new hobby you’ve picked up. The key thing is to move around and make it feel more 3-D. (But don’t make people seasick with sudden camera movement.)
- A few advanced techniques: a) flip back and forth between your front camera (for a headshot) and back camera (so you can show someone else your point of view); b) get creative about camera angles by pretending you are a cat crawling on the dining table looking at the food, or you are showing your space through the height/vantage point of a four year old; c) be a “drone” and let your friend “control” you by giving you instructions on where they want to look.
3. Video Card
Thanksgiving is about giving thanks. Thank people you know with a surprise video card, using a video message or a video you email.
- Get your phone, so that you can record a video message in WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, LINE, or another messaging platform. Or you can shoot a video with your phone and then email the video.
- Create a video card for a friend by recording a video message or video where you thank them for something that you’ve never before thanked them for. Try to make it personal and specific.
- Send the video card to your friend.
Using video is important — video will give an added emotional valence. And thanking them for something that you’ve never thanked them for before is also important.
4. That Thanksgiving Thing We Do
I love fifth grade teacher Barry White Jr’s practice of personalized handshakes for each one of his students. Inspired by that, I created an activity called That Thing We Do, in which people create a way of greeting each other on a video call that involves some physical motions that they make up. They can draw inspiration from various high-fives, dance moves, patty cake, exaggerated facial expressions, camera angles, and other things.
For Thanksgiving, when you start and/or end a video call with a friend, try making up That Thanksgiving Thing We Do. Get creatively Thanksgiving-y together! Don’t take it too seriously. The important thing is to move around and have fun together.
Again, I encourage you to create your own twists to the recipes above. Play around together as you’re thankful for each other’s presence in your lives.
Happy Thanksgiving!
