I’m fairly certain that Emma Lazarus did not have a bunch of internet nerds in mind when she wrote the poem that’s now emblazoned on a plaque near the Statue of Liberty. But sitting in a church recreation hall among a motley crew of Reddit users with nowhere else to go on Thanksgiving, it’s hard for me not to recall them:
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
In the Bay Area, the proverbial Lady Liberty is Sara Scott-Hitchings; for the past five years, this self-described “pushy Jewish mother” has organized an alternative Thanksgiving dinner for Reddit users who either don’t have a gathering to attend or don’t want to attend one. And the poor, tempest-tost masses? That’s me, baby — and several dozen other online denizens.
But the circumstances that brought us here are all different. For some, it was a result of late planning.
“I realized I didn’t make any plans for Thanksgiving and had nowhere to go. Like a day and a half ago, I was trying to figure out what to do because I knew that if I was home alone, I’d just be sad,” says a Redditor named Brian. “If you’re home alone, this is one of the many holidays where you’re made to feel shitty about that.”
For others, it’s a little more personal: One attendee has made Redditsgiving an annual tradition since his biological family doesn’t approve of him being LGBTQ.
Redditsgiving attendees are generally “a mix of people who need to be here and a mix of people who want to be here,” Scott-Hitchings says. “[There are] loving people who come and want to share the joy of the holiday with other people. And then [there are] people who need that joy shared to them… I’d say it’s about 50/50 every year.”
Regardless of your reason for coming, though, Scott-Hitchings makes it clear that guests are not only welcome, but wanted. While her husband — the “powerhouse behind [Redditsgiving],” according to Scott-Hitchings — cooks for the attendees, she sets up decorations, unloads the car, rushes to and from the kitchen, and, most importantly, talks with every person who shows up, both when they arrive and before they head out.
“And that’s when I approached my in-laws and my husband and I was like, ‘So Thanksgiving is sort of permanently like this now. Cool?’”
But don’t even think about taking off without grabbing leftovers — no one is allowed to leave without at least one item in hand, a tactic that Scott-Hitchings says ensures that no one leaves empty-handed just because they were too shy to ask for a to-go box.
While Redditsgiving now takes place in a rented event hall, it comes from more humble beginnings. It all started with a post submitted to the r/BayArea subreddit back in November 2015.
“Thanksgiving is a weird holiday for me and has been most of my life. As such, I spend the day at a local restaurant/bar enjoying the live music, fancy food, and chatting up the other Thanksgiving orphans,” Scott-Hitchings wrote. “I was thinking if there were any other people who aren’t big on the holiday but want to enjoy a pleasant evening, I’d be happy to have company.”
That year, three people took her up on that offer. The night was admittedly a little awkward — an improvised storytelling game failed to take off, and one guest was a little too blunt — but there were definite highlights too. The group went out for a nice dinner at a nearby restaurant, hiked, and got to know each other. One attendee is still a close friend of Scott-Hitchings to this day.
The following year, word spread — “I guess because I successfully did not murder anyone,” Scott-Hitchings posits — and the guest list increased tenfold. Armed with a few Safeway Thanksgiving meal kits, Scott-Hitchings fed a group of 30 in her apartment. By the third year, Redditsgiving had become an institution.
You might not be the type to hit up strangers on the dance floor of a club, but here? You’re among your people.
“Someone posted, ‘Does anybody know of any good restaurants for Thanksgiving?’ And someone was like, ‘Oh, there’s this nice lady named Sara that has one. Just wait a few weeks, and she’ll post about it.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, I guess I’m hosting this every year,’” Scott-Hitchings said. “And that’s when I approached my in-laws and my husband, and I was like, ‘So Thanksgiving is sort of permanently like this now. Cool?’ And they’re like, ‘Yeah, it’s cool.’”
The Redditsgiving of today is significantly more structured than it was in years past — think: Google Forms, menu planning, coordinated reminder notifications, etc. — but the sense of community is still palpable. I’ve just barely settled into a spot at one of the long paper-covered tables when a woman around my age approaches me and strikes up a conversation about what brought me here, what my job is, and where I live. Not long after, Scott-Hitchings’ neighbor — a recent empty-nester who grew up in Morocco and speaks five languages — joins us.
The attendees in general are a pretty diverse crew. People from all different backgrounds, genders, orientations, sizes, and ages come together without hesitation. There are toddlers and grandparents, recent U.S. immigrants, and Bay Area natives. And if anyone begins to feel out of place, it doesn’t take long for Scott-Hitchings to swoop in and start a conversation or connect them with a group. As Brian affectionately puts it, “She is mothering the shit out of this.”
I realize I’ve been there six hours — twice as long as I had planned on staying.
I’m impressed by how well everyone clicks, given how little we ostensibly have in common. Whether I’m playing a board game I barely understand with a group of twenty- and thirty-something men or waiting in line for turkey alongside a woman twice my age, people proactively reach out left and right — something I wasn’t expecting, given Redditors’ reputation for being awkward introverts. And I’m not alone in my surprise.
“I wasn’t expecting a lot from Reddit. But it seems like there’s a bunch of cool people here,” says Jorge, who recently moved to the Bay Area from Seattle with his wife, Sophia.
I definitely get the sense that most Redditsgiving attendees aren’t as outgoing in the real world as they are here, though — something I can definitely identify with.
“We’re introverts by nature. So this was a nice way to meet people without feeling like we were putting ourselves out there too much,” adds Sophia.
I suspect that our shared sense of introversion is exactly what allows us to open up so much more than we normally would. You might not be the type to hit up strangers on the dance floor of a club, but here? You’re among your people. As a result, conversation comes easily over the course of the meal. At my table, the topics range from one woman’s training regimen for her upcoming ultramarathon to which video games are worth playing to my upcoming trip to Spain.
Soon, we’ve reached the dessert course, then the cleanup, then the board-game portion of the night — a perennial favorite. As people begin to trickle out, I realize I’ve been there six hours — twice as long as I had planned on staying.
For most people, Reddit is purely a form of escapism — a place where you can distract yourself from the cold indifference of the universe by geeking out over your favorite fandom, finding new recipes, or posting surrealist memes. But to a certain group of Reddit devotees—myself included—it’s become something much more.
“It used to be that we all lived somewhere where we knew our neighbors, and now we don’t as much, but we go online and we make neighbors there,” says a Redditor named Tom.
For Scott-Hitchings, finding community in Reddit was a natural step. Between hiring an employee, finding a roommate, and moderating a support group for fellow sufferers of agoraphobia through the website, “Reddit has touched probably every part of my life,” she says. “If only one person came, but they came because they needed somewhere to go that day, I’m good.” With Redditsgiving, she’s able to pay it forward.
I didn’t walk away from Redditsgiving feeling like I’d spent the holiday with family. To be honest, I’ll probably never see most of the people I met there again. But I did get to know a lot of warm, caring, and interesting nerds of my own ilk, who showed a genuine interest in me. And when you’re thousand of miles away from home during the holidays, looking to replicate some sense of belonging, that ain’t half bad at all.
