With many of my cousins and I being older and in college, Thanksgiving is the time where everyone is home from school with the chance to spend quality time with one another and catch up on conversations. Conversing with family members during the holidays is an important part of American culture and allows us to be appreciative of being surrounded by our parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews. These family members consist mostly of my blood relatives, but also my family members that are related to me through affinal ties.

Kenneth J. Guest, Essentials of Cultural Anthropology (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2016), Page 246.