As much as I love Syracuse, I can’t wait to get out of here for the week.  The Garden State’s slightly higher temperatures, strip malls, gas station attendants and Bruce Springsteen are all beckoning for me to come home. It is a break much needed.

There’s nothing quite like sitting down with your extended family for a huge feast to celebrate the fairy tale version of some British subjects’ morally questionable actions. It’s a nice break from the chaos and stress of college. But the more you think about it, maybe it’s not.

For many people, it’s not a stretch to say that Thanksgiving is simply the family-oriented continuation of a Greek life gathering. When you look closely enough, the similarities between the Turkey Day festivities and social collegiate ones are astounding.

Both days start out with a parade.  One involves that good old American tradition — commercialization.  You’ll probably get to see Ryan Seacrest or some other white-bread announcer talk about how great “Guardians of the Galaxy” was as a giant Groot balloon flies above Sixth Avenue.  The other parade is made up of underclassmen completely underdressed for the weather stumbling along Euclid. Their broken dreams spill out of Gatorade bottles as they search for a party to wiggle their way into. Honestly, I’d rather watch this than Ariana Grande dancing on a float.

Once the parade is over, the party usually begins.  At both events, people are bound to show up late. I play that role when it comes to my school friends and my family. There will likely be a lot of hugs. The comments accompanying these embraces are likely to be very different.  As opposed to the family “Wow, you must have grown 3 feet since I last saw you”-type, it’s more likely to be “OMG gurl, I haven’t seen you since like Writing 105 on Wednesday. How’s the bae you found on Tinder?” Or something like that. I don’t actually know how our generation speaks.

As the party and feast progress, there are going to be a ton of inevitable similarities. People will be passed out on the couch. There’s the possibility someone will be passing the contents of their stomach into the porcelain throne. This, however, is most likely to be from eating too much turkey at the family gathering.

Someone will undoubtedly get injured as well. The circumstances may be different — that one crazy uncle from the South trying to deep-fry the turkey, as opposed to some tough guy trying to punch through a wall — but it’ll happen.

If you come from a large family, Thanksgiving is bound to be loud. Granted, a DJ probably isn’t going to be blasting Avicii while the family sits around the dinner table, but there will be noise. Much like a college party, some of the younger cousins will be running around screaming. One may have a toy bucket stuck on his head, which doesn’t seem impossible at a fraternal throwdown, either.

Then there’s the centerpiece of both events: the table. Everyone ends up crowded around the table, some gobbling down turkey, some guzzling some kind of alcoholic beverage — many doing both. At the house party, the pong table replaces the treasured family dinner table, the Natty replaces the nice wine and a bunch of moldy solo cups replace the fine china, but the principle is there.

So while you probably won’t be grinding on your relatives or shotgunning a can of cranberry sauce, remember that Thanksgiving break serves a lot of the same purposes as those college get-togethers. It’s a chance to loosen up, have a good time and make memories with the people you enjoy. That may sound sappy enough to make into syrup and pour on some pancakes, but I like to think there’s some truth in it.

Gobble gobble.

Zach Schweikert is a sophomore advertising major. Every day he eats an apple, but those doctors just won’t leave him alone. His column appears every Thursday in Pulp. He can be reached at zdschwei@syr.edu

Published on November 20, 2014 at 12:01 am