For several years, my husband, David, and I have been going to a vegan potluck party on Thanksgiving Day hosted by our friends Sid and Linda, longtime vegans and animal activists. Sid is on the board of Spay Neuter Action Project, which runs a spay-and-neuter bus for companion animals of low-income guardians and feral cats. Linda is the vice president of San Diego Animal Advocates, a local animal rights group. Their party is like no other, starting at noon and ending well into the night. People come and go all day, sharing a variety of delicious vegan dishes and desserts.

I sat down with Sid and Linda to ask them about this annual tradition.

This has been a fantastic way to celebrate Thanksgiving for me. When did you start opening up your home on Thanksgiving Day, and how long have you been doing it?

We took it over when someone else stopped hosting a small gathering of vegans. So that would make the first year about 1996. At first, it was just 20 or 30 close friends. In 1998, we added Linda’s painting studio to the front of the house, which created a lot more room. We decided to open it up and invite vegans and animal activists we thought might need a place to go on Thanksgiving and have been hosting this party ever since.

Why did you decide to continue this tradition of a Thanksgiving potluck at your home? It must be a ton of work.

We remembered what it was like to be a couple of vegans on Thanksgiving with nowhere to go. Restaurants were either closed or serving turkey, and families were serving dead animals as well. It was very lonely. We wanted people like us to have a place to go on Thanksgiving where they could feel at home and eat everything without worrying about whether it had any animal products in it.

And yes, it’s a lot of work. It usually takes us about three weeks to get the house in order for this large of a party. But it’s really worth it, you know. And now all our friends depend on it. We often think that we might want to take a break for a year or so and not send out the invitations, but we figure that everyone would just show up anyway! So the tradition continues!

You guys provide all the Tofurkys, right?

As the number of people attending continued to grow, we found that we were always running out of the Thanksgiving staples. So in addition to providing all the drinks, I make a bunch of Tofurkys, and we assign a few of the regular guests to make gravy, potatoes, and stuffing. The side dishes and desserts take care of themselves.

You mentioned that you get between 80 and 100 people on any given year, correct?

Many of the people we invite have invited friends and family over the years. We’ve met a lot of wonderful people through this event. The gathering has grown from 80 to well over 100, with people coming and going all day and into the evening. Luckily, we have a large deck on the back of our house that accommodates lots of tables and chairs. And the weather gods in San Diego have been kind to us—most of the time. One year, it rained, and everyone had to stay inside eating in chairs all over the house. We have a relatively small house, so it was very cozy. And in a different way, it was an especially fun party that year—the rain forced everyone to mingle, because if you got up to get more food, you lost your seat and had to find another one!

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We’ve all been grateful to Sid and Linda for their generosity in opening up their home every year to host this fantastic vegan potluck party. Maybe some of you out there will do the same for your friends and family by starting a vegan Thanksgiving potluck tradition of your own!