Each American holiday has its own distinct flavor. Halloween is candy-coated and syrupy; the Fourth of July, smoky with a large side of beer. And Thanksgiving, of course, tastes of turkey, mashed potatoes, and a whole slew of exotic Persian dishes.Okay, so admittedly, my traditional Thanksgiving celebration has never been what many consider “traditional.” Such is the by-product of being raised in an Iranian family – no feast is complete without some mast va khiyar, or at least a good heaping of polo, rice. Oh, and, of course, dancing. Always dancing.

But oddly enough, there is one American tradition that has been a part of my not-so-traditional Thanksgivings ever since I can remember: football.

It’s inevitable. Every Thanksgiving, once the food has been shoved down our gullets and my relatives have kissed my cheeks until they’re bruised, my American father clicks on the television and we all slowly gather round, plopping into various positions on the couches. Even those of us who don’t really understand sports, or, in some cases, English, have come to silently accept this as part of the day’s rituals. We eat, we laugh, we play card games, and we watch husky American men launch themselves at one another over a 15-oz. piece of pig.

Aside from one or two of the American-raised cousins, no one really pays much attention to the game; it ends up serving as more of a backdrop, the perfect bass-line for the swell of multi-lingual conversations to rise above. And yet, the tradition persists, regardless of attention paid, regardless of score or teams, like some sort of Iranian-American watering hole.

Why that is, I’ve never really considered. When I was younger, “football” to me was synonymous with drunk Southerners (my Iranian cousin married a genuine Southerner; neither her accent nor our family reunions have been the same since) whooping and hollering and eventually, ceremoniously peeing on the ashes of the losing team’s hat. I never connected that version of “football” with the one represented on our television screen, let alone the considerably less inebriated goings-on of Thanksgiving Day.

As I grew older, I slowly came to recognize the similarities in the two celebrations. Sure, one involves significantly less urine (thank God), but both use the beloved American sport as a neutral meeting ground, an excuse of sorts for creating a get-together. The Southerners may have taken more interest in the game than my foreign relatives, but the sport was never so much their focus as the beer drinking and general debauchery of the day. Who won was unimportant; so long as someone got to engage in public urination, the day was complete.

Similarly, my Iranian relatives forget the game in favor of their conversations -conversations that, thanks to the draw of the game, involve cousins and younger brothers who otherwise stay hidden in back rooms. Somehow, the sweaty men on television serve as a sort of bait, reeling in even the often-skeptical American raised cousins. Once caught, these cousins are subjected to extensive discussion and torturous questioning before they are released, wriggling, back into familiar waters.

And the thing is, everyone involved, cousin, aunt, uncle, mother and father alike, love every minute of it.

It’s similar in every family. You complain about your crazy aunt and her weird obsession with creepy miniatures, or your balding uncle who can never quite remember your name, but when it comes down to it, it’s those little nuances that make you love them even more. My cousins and I roll our eyes at our aunts’ and uncles’ overwhelming affection, but we privately purr inside whenever they take the time to notice us. And it’s the traditions – the random, sometimes downright bizarre traditions that bring all of these oddities together and form the eccentric, absurd, absolutely fantastic thing we call “family.”

So maybe our family’s Thanksgiving isn’t so traditional. Maybe we don’t care about the game nearly as much as some others do. But we do care about one another enough to make sure we maintain our traditions, and, more importantly, our unshakeable family bond throughout the years.

Just, you know, without the peeing.