The Thanksgiving holiday is a rather odd American tradition in which we stop our regular lives mid-week, engage in often extraordinary pursuit of simultaneous long-distance travel, and then give ourselves licence to gorge on food and television for at least 1, and oftentimes as many as 4 consecutive days. It kicks off an orgy of materialist economy, and is often bracketed with spectacles from giant balloon mascots to interstate sports rivalries.
Growing up, my family split Thanksgiving holidays between our South Texas Webers, and the Oklahoma Webbers (it's a long story, but for the record, it involves no intermarriage, but has dubbed my brothers and I the "3-b Web[b]er Boys"). In a move that I'm sure is quite common among the decreasing number of American nuclear families, we alternated Thanksgiving and Christmas so that one was spent each year with one side, and then the holidays flipped the next year.
The two families were located in neighboring states, but separated by 500 miles of interstate highway, a straight shot down I-35 from OKC to San Antonio. As a result, they were both culturally similiar, yet geographically distant. Another marked difference was that the OKC Webbers (et al) were exclusively "city folk," being that they grew up and lived in major urban centers their entire lives. The Texas Webers (who are much more numerous) are a different story, residing mostly in semi-rural cities like Hondo, Uvalde or Castroville. Don't mis-read; thanks to cable TV, the internet, etc. they are all very much members of the 21st century, and most no longer live and work on farms and ranches. But many grew up in those environs, and many more stayed close, or even returned to them, after time in San Antonio, Houston, or NYC.
Strange as it is, the Webber/Weber contrast of metropolitan and "ruro-politan" communities provided me with some of the most dramatic culture clashes of my pre-college life (it's Oklahoma, people, we aren't known for diversity).
Example #1 - In Oklahoma, my father, an oil & gas attorney - wore olive slacks, yellow button-downs, and paisley ties, went by "Jim" and signed paperwork as "James William Weber." Anywhere south of Dallas, he was "Jimmy" (usually pronounced "Jim-eh"), wore jeans, and on more than one occasion, squeezed into the very old cowboy boots he still keeps in the back of his closet.
Example #2 - In Texas, children over the age of 12 were allowed to pour their fathers (and mothers) a jack-and-coke at the card table in the garage that served as the event's open bar. My Oklahoma family didn't serve alcohol on holidays. This even included the grand annual vaudevillian affair, The Webber Musicale, a caroling/recital/talent show tradition that continues to shock and amaze the uninitiated that such a thing could even exist, let alone as a dry event.
In addition to the requisite warmth of shared family bonds, the two things that both sides of the singular Web[b]er family coin had in common when it came to the holidays were Turkey and Football. Again, I don't want to assume this is universal in American culture, but it is certainly common. Ham makes a strong bid for Christmas time, but we Web[b]ers like our turkey, and the Webbber boys are no exception.
This brings us (finally) to the odd circumstances of my past 3 thanksgivings, in which professional commitments or personal budget has disallowed me from sharing the celebration of over-indulgence with either of these factions of my heritage.
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