Thanksgiving is a time for people to come together and celebrate the good things they appreciate in life - be it friends, family, or simply a nice turkey dinner. Most often, folks choose to enjoy the holiday with their relatives, but it's not uncommon to spend the afternoon with close friends under certain circumstances.
Celebrating Thanksgiving with a complete stranger, however, is almost unheard of.
And yet, that's exactly what happened in 2016, when Wanda Dench accidentally sent a Thanksgiving dinner invitation to Jamal Hinton.
Hinton, just 17 at the time, let the woman know about her mistake, but was still cheeky enough to ask to join in anyway. And whaddya know, she said yes! Now, two years later, Dench and Hinton are welcoming in the holiday together for the third time in a row.
This is the original conversation that took place in 2016:
True to her word, Dench provided dinner for the teen (who she now calls her "honorary grandson"), and the pair became fast friends.
This year, Hinton posted on Twitter again to let the world know that he was still in touch with his "other grandma".
Back in 2016, after the first dinner, Hinton spoke to the media about the experience of meeting Dench.
"I'd never seen her before and she welcomed me into her home," he said. "That shows me how great of a person she is, I'm thankful for people like that."
And the pair spoke to the press again the year after.
"It was really nice having everybody here," Dench said of her 2017 Thanksgiving. "We got to laugh about last year and reminisce about how it all blew up on our phone and how I had to change my number. We had a laugh and a good time."
She continued: "The world is becoming a better place than it used to be. I'm loving it. I love that you don't have to know someone or know their background to be nice to them."
Everyone on Twitter who saw the original story was thrilled to see the two had managed to meet up again, with many people leaving comments wishing them both a happy Thanksgiving.
Hinton has promised to upload a video of himself and Dench to YouTube at some point today, so stay tuned if you want more details about their 2018 celebrations.
Dench has said before that Hinton has an open invitation to any and all Thanksgiving dinners she hosts in the future, so it looks like these two will be friends for life.
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