For many of us, the holidays are a season of return. A return to childhood homes, to long-standing traditions, to the people who raised us in church pews, ball fields, and in the kitchen. Core memories thick with laughter and love. But the holidays can also be a season of disruption. Distance, grief, identity, non-traditional family structures, the rise of singlehoodcomplicated family histories, political misalignment, and the simple modern realities of adulthood mean that not everyone gets to — or chooses — to go “home.”
Meaning more people are choosing a different kind of gathering: one built on care, presence, and the people who show up.
According to a 2024 Pew Research Center surveywhile many Americans plan to gather with loved ones for Thanksgiving, about five percent will spend it alone, and many won’t be part of any traditional gathering at all. That number may seem small on the surface, but when you consider how each generation is becoming less connected than the one before, it becomes meaningful when you think about who the “alone” often are.
For Black communities, the holidays can stir up a mix of joy and pressure. The National Alliance on Mental Illness warns that African Americans may be 20 percent more vulnerable to the “holiday blues,” whether because of loss, isolation, or the weight of expectations.
Long before the terms “chosen family” or “found family” went mainstream, our families expanded by necessity: neighbors who kept spare keys and made sure you were behaving even when your parents weren’t home; aunties and uncles who weren’t blood relatives, but had the best stories (sometimes at their own expense), and made sure you stayed up on game; and of course the friend’s mama who made sure she fed everyone on the block.
Today, more people live far from where they grew up, estrangement is less taboo, and identity and safety shape where we feel at ease. The holiday table has quietly become an honest mirror of what family looks like today.
And while sometimes these shifts can be rooted in pain: the family that doesn’t accept you, the one you lost, or the one you outgrew, what emerges can be deeply beautiful.
I spoke with three people whose holidays look nothing like the ones they grew up with, and everything like the families they need.
ADRIENNE BRANDYBURG — PHILADELPHIA
Adrienne Brandyburg (37). model, actor, and HR representative, has lived in Philadelphia for the past four years. She hadn’t planned on spending the holidays anywhere but home this year. Normally, she would be back in Chicago, filling her plate and cracking jokes with her family. But when it came time to buy a ticket to go home, the federal government was still in a shutdown. The idea of traveling during that uncertainty, the crowded airports, delays, and chaos, felt like more trouble than it was worth. “I just didn’t want to deal with all that,” she said.
This is also her first holiday season after the end of the relationship she moved to Philadelphia for. “It’s fresh,” she said, before adding, “Which is fine. I think that’s what makes it better, and the fact that I actually have a community here. Honestly, I’ve been living my best life.”
But it wasn’t always like that. Brandyburg said her first two years in Philadelphia were difficult socially. Making friends as an adult was harder than she expected, and for a while, she wasn’t sure the city would ever feel like home. “There were times I thought about moving back to Chicago,” she said.
That shifted last summer after seeing someone on TikTok talk about Bumble BFF. She decided to give the app a try, and that’s how she met Jasmine, one of her first real friends in the city. “We were immediately locked in,” Brandyburg said.
Jasmine soon introduced her to a local friend group called “A Case of the Mondays,” a circle of Black professionals and creatives who meet on Monday nights after work to hang out, decompress, and check in on each other. They have multiple group chats, she laughed: “One for the women, one for the collective, and we even have a WhatsApp for the Android users.”
This year is her first Friendsgiving in Philadelphia. And although she’s not intentionally avoiding family, you can imagine that it does remove a layer of anticipated awkwardness, the explanations, the retellings, the questions about why she’s coming home alone this year. Instead, she’ll be surrounded by people she’s grown close to over the past several months.
What matters most to her is that the group isn’t just a social circle. They show up for each other. “You know how there’s this whole epidemic of loneliness, especially for men?” she said. “Yeah, we make sure everyone really feels seen and included. So, it’s not just doing fun events. It’s checking in. We talk about serious shit as well.”
And when it comes to what she’s bringing to Friendsgiving, Brandyburg knows exactly who she is: “Rolls,” she said proudly — making sure to clarify that they’re Sweet Hawaiian rolls — plus a few cakes. “Cause you gotta have options,” she added.
This year, that’s the version of family she’s choosing. A group that is still new, but ready to accept her with open arms.
RALPH LAGUERRE — LOS ANGELES
Ralph LaGuerre (37) a Haitian-American artist and co-founder of KnockHouse Studios, claims both Boston and South Florida as home. LaGuerre is a multi-hyphenate who doesn’t chase titles so much as he chases expression.
When he talks about chosen family and what home means to him, it sounds less like a place and more like a trajectory.
LaGuerre was living in New York, obsessively doing stand-up, when his mother got sick. He moved back to Florida to help, but after she passed, he felt that going back to New York wasn’t the answer.
“My mom always said, we never go back in life, we move forward,” LaGuerre recalled. “So, I wasn’t going back.” Forward became the only direction that made sense.
Growing up, Thanksgiving was at his family’s house in South Florida with his “church family more than a family-family,” as he put it. When his parents’ marriage began to fracture, the holiday splintered too. “At some point it was like… we don’t have to do Thanksgiving like this anymore,” he said. “And I just started going to other people’s houses. Other comedians’ families. Friends’ families. White families. Black families. Southern families. You get to see all the different ways people love each other — or don’t.”
He reflected on lavish Thanksgivings with multiple tables and an actual kids’ table, the kind of scenes that feel straight out of a movie. And then there were the weird ones, like the tense dinner where a father clearly disapproved of his son’s marriage. “I was like, I could’ve stayed home,” he laughed.
Those experiences didn’t send him running back to tradition; they reinforced how many ways a holiday can look, and how unstable “home” can be. “Sometimes I feel like an anime character,” he said. “The home base is destroyed, and now the journey and your new family are ahead of you.”
By the time he landed in L.A., holidays were no longer anchored in going “back” anywhere. If anything, they became proof of his mother’s mantra. “As adults, we get choices now,” he said. “You can see how other communities are built. What you like. What you don’t.”
In Los Angeles, he’s built a quiet network of close friends he considers real family. People he’s seen “cry, laugh, break down, rebuild.” But he doesn’t romanticize it. Some years he’s with family in a traditional setting; others he’s at a friend’s six-course dinner.
“Holidays are what you allow them to be,” he said. “I’ve never lacked an invitation. Someone’s home has always been open to me. I just keep moving forward and trusting there’ll be a door open when I get there.”
LUC ASHLEY & JARON MARQUIS — LOS ANGELES
Luc Ashley (42) and her husband, Jaron Marquis (42), co-own Urban Geniusa television and film production company based in Los Angeles. Their relationship began in a way that now feels appropriately cinematic, meeting on separate double dates, and later that same year, their first official date happened to fall on Thanksgiving — cue the Hallmark movie.
Three years later, as young parents living in Chicago, it was also on Thanksgiving that they had their first real argument as a couple. This time, over the logistics of splitting a holiday across multiple homes during a trip back home. Both coming from separated families, and with grandparents still living, the day required bouncing between six different households, making sure everyone got to see the grandbabies.
The problem was simple: after hours of driving, greeting, hugging, and “just stopping by,” they realized they hadn’t actually eaten. Some relatives were still cooking, others had just finished, and others were wrapping up. “When we got back to the car, we were hangry, tired, and irritated,” Jaron said, mentioning that at one stop, the only plate he’d managed to secure was a small serving of green beans. No shade to green beans, but they’re not number one on the call sheet for Thanksgiving. They’re a supporting character at best.
That was the moment they made a new rule: they would host their own Thanksgiving meal first, then visit family the following day. As their careers took them from Chicago to New York and eventually Los Angeles, that rule became the core of their own tradition grounded in gratitude, service, and intentional community.
City living shifted their perspective as well. “We started seeing how much people didn’t have around the holidays,” Luc said. That awareness made them more mindful about scaling back waste and focusing on what mattered.
Though at the time I’m writing this, as someone who has received one of Luc’s plates, I can say nothing about her cooking feels scaled back.
Over time, their home became a gathering place for others, especially transplants navigating their first holiday away from family. But the instinct to open their home came from remembering the places that once opened theirs.
“You gotta go to the right places,” Luc said, quoting the movie Coming to America. The church became their anchor. “That’s where our kids met other kids,” she explained. Sunday dinners turned into holiday dinners, which turned into a network of people who knew they always had somewhere to go. Colleagues, single parents, friends going through divorce, and people simply unable to travel home all found a place around their table.
“Community can start from the smallest things,” Luc said. “And food is intimate. Eating is intimate.” Jaron added, “You even see it in the Bible. Jesus was always eating with people, at the Last Supper, at the wedding, even after the resurrection, they were on the beach sharing a meal.”
Jesus may have been a foodie
Now, hosting is their rhythm. They no longer argue over where to spend Thanksgiving. They have just one yearly point of friendly controversy: Jaron believes he shouldn’t have to wait until Thanksgiving Day to try the desserts prepared the night before. Luc wholly disagrees. Whether they find a compromise (I suggested the mini dessert flight on Thanksgiving Eve) remains to be seen. But in their home full of children, friends, and whoever needs a place to land, there will always be enough to go around.
