Ready for a happy Thanksgiving celebration?

Why humans feel the need to feast together

For thousands of years, humans have come together in small group to feast on food. Why is it important – and why do we still continue the tradition?

It's a peculiarly human universal: we like to sit down together for a good tuck-in. Meals out with friends, dinner parties, holiday get-togethers where we regularly overindulge – eating shared meals is so common that it's rarely remarked upon, except when the idea that it's not happening enough enjoys a societal vogue.

Panics about a decline in family dinners, for instance, regularly sweep through headlines. There is some evidence that such concerns are not a modern trend and may be at least a 100 years old. Eating together, all this suggests, is not only common, but somehow deeply powerful. But why?

Sharing food as a behaviour is likely to go back to before the origin of our species, as chimpanzees and bonobos, two of our closest primate relatives, also share food with their social groups, biologists have observed. But giving food to those closest to you is not the same as having a meal together, points out sociologist Nicklas Neuman of Uppsala University in Sweden. "You can distribute food as an object without sitting down and actually eating with others," he says. Humans seem to have added a number of complex social layers to this act.

No. I am going to restaurant with 2other friends and one of them just called me when he was drunk and was very rude to me on the phone...he's supposed to pay for dinner and now I don't even want to go. But it's partly for business so I have to show up... maybe I will pay for my own meal, I don't want to owe him anything...

Should I pay for myself? He's not gonna apologize coz he's an asshole, I feel it's best not to owe anyone anything

Well, the replies went a different direction than I'd anticipated!

In the spirit of my OP, here's more Thanksgiving fun from a few familiar faces.......