Old holiday traditions find new meaning

John Cazin revels in something most Southland residents would never dream of trying the day after Thanksgiving. Rather than spending today recovering from the year’s most celebrated day of overeating, he’s starting anew, cooking a 23-pound turkey and an 18-pound ham to redo the celebration for what he and his wife have dubbed Friends Friday.

“Our circle of friends are a pretty tight group, but family obligations always make it so we can’t get together on the actual day [of Thanksgiving],” said Cazin, a 47-year-old special-effects technician from Yorba Linda. “The friendships are strong enough that it actually goes beyond friendship, and it’s actually like a secondary family.”

Tradition dictates that Thanksgiving should be a grand, food-filled celebration involving biological families. But for many Southland residents separated from relatives by distance or choice this year, “family” can be variously defined.

That definition is often a choice between one’s “family of origin” and one’s “family of choice,” said Judy Chiasson, a diversity official with the Los Angeles Unified School District.

“Many people have built new families. One reason is because they are geographically distanced from their family of origin. [A second reason] is they may be emotionally distanced from their family of origin,” Chiasson said.

She pointed to a group of about 175 gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youths who held a Thanksgiving social Saturday night in West Hollywood. Many of the young people experienced problems with their families when they announced their sexual orientation, she said.

Through the communal event, “they were able to create their own sense of family,” Chiasson said.

This Thanksgiving, many students, young professionals, single adults and seniors found other reasons to challenge the idea that they should spend the holidays with their relatives and not their closest friends.

For years the Garcias, who run La Casa Garcia restaurant in Anaheim, have shirked their own family meal on Thanksgiving to cook for thousands of the area’s poor and homeless.

“It’s really nice, it’s really big,” said Cindy Garcia, 28, the youngest sibling. “It’s like a big family.”

This year the Garcias cooked more than 700 turkeys to feed some 15,000 people at the Honda Center.

Most public events across the Southland on Thursday, such as the Garcias’ meal, were geared toward people who do not have the option of a traditional family Thanksgiving.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and a slew of actors and celebrities served meals to about 1,500 homeless at the Midnight Mission in downtown Los Angeles; the Laugh Factory gave meals to “struggling and/or lonely comics, actors and the rest of the entertainment community”; and there were several running events in communities such as Long Beach and La Canada to benefit charity.

Justin Rudd’s Long Beach Turkey Trot drew about 3,700 runners and walkers Thursday morning and raised about $80,000 for the nonprofit Community Action Team.

Rudd, who started the event five years ago, said one of the highlights was their Chicken Chucking Championship, in which competitors fling a sand-filled rubber chicken across the beach.

“It’s to see the fowl that flies the farthest,” Rudd said, laughing.

Cazin said Friends Friday developed about 12 years ago after he experienced yet another stressful Thanksgiving meal with his family.

“It was a completely horrible day, and people were late, and people were mad, and there was drama and siblings upset with each other and I was literally on the phone with my friend complaining, and he said he had had a similar situation,” Cazin said.

That inspired Cazin and his wife, Melanie, to hold the whole thing again with good friends and only a couple of rules -- no dressing up and no drama. Each year, the same 16 to 20 people, and some guests, show up on their doorstep for a meal the day after Thanksgiving.

“The deal is that at some point your friendships grow beyond the superficial stuff. You go through all these personal experiences in life and through tragedies, things that pull you together as a group, and it makes you think: ‘You know what? We’re not really just friends, there’s a family here, too.’ It’s hard to get to that level for sure,” Cazin said.

“But family isn’t just blood.”

--

ari.bloomekatz@latimes.com