The Family Celebration
In the Hendersons’ Alexandria kitchen, the air is thick with steam and history on Thanksgiving Day. A pot of collard greens simmers on the cooktop beside a roasted turkey, its skin glowing beneath a drizzle of honey and herbs. Savory aromas and time-honored friends fill every room of their home.
“This is what home smells like,” said Alicia Henderson, wiping her hands on a linen towel. Her sister Danielle Bolger, who drove in from Fairfax that morning, nodded in agreement as she arranged a platter of roasted root vegetables, each piece glistening under a slathering of olive oil.
This has been the scene for what they call Friendsgiving at the Yard, a combination of the Turkey Day moniker and the spirit of the Yard itself, the central outdoor gathering space on historically Black college campuses where students come together to socialize.
The tradition began when a group of friends, all recent graduates of Spelman College and Morehouse College and members of historically Black fraternities and sororities known as the Divine Nine, couldn’t afford to fly home for Thanksgiving. So, instead they had dinner with each other.
That first year’s menu was a feast on a budget: boxed mac and cheese, a 49-cent-per-pound frozen turkey, and a pumpkin pie that someone picked up at the Giant supermarket.
Today, more than 25 years later, the tradition continues. Over time they traded freezer-aisle birds for heritage free-range fowl and studio apartments for 8,000-square-foot homes. Though their lives have changed, the sentiment: friends, family, and heritage, remains the same.
They cook. They move together easily, trading pans and seasoning by feel. Sweet potatoes caramelize under a torch. Danielle pours cranberry sauce she made herself, laced with orange peel and cinnamon bark. There’s laughter, the easy kind that comes from longtime friends who know exactly where the mixing bowls live.
As the couples began to have children, they added a new tradition. Before the feast begins, those gathered take a moment to share what the families call “the context.” It started years ago as a joke when someone teased Marcus Henderson for turning every meal into a history lesson.
“Most people talk about the Mayflower this time of year,” Marcus says. “But our story starts before that. It began with the Africans who arrived in Virginia in 1619 on the White Lion and built communities long before the Pilgrims showed up.”
At Friendsgiving, the holiday isn’t about erasing history. It’s about reclaiming it and weaving in the facts that tell their story.
“We wanted our kids to know that we’ve always been here,” Alicia said. “That their roots go deep, deeper than any textbook will tell them.”
That sense of legacy doesn’t end with the meal.
After dinner one year someone started an impromptu step show, a high-energy tradition in which African American fraternities and sororities use synchronized, percussive movements and chants to express pride in their organizations.
“We can’t perform like we did in college. We’ve got bad knees and might throw out our backs, but we still know how to make the Yard shake,” Marcus laughed, referring to the central outdoor gathering spaces on historically Black college campuses where students come together to socialize.
The Friendsgiving feast isn’t formal. It isn’t even planned. It just happens, the way the best traditions.