For argument's sake, let's assume that the offspring of the late George H.W. and Barbara Bush assemble at, say, the family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine.
The occasion will be solemn, as the family's patriarch and matriarch rest in peace back in Texas, far from the oceanside home they dearly loved.
The holiday observance comes just three weeks and two days since the presidential election, six of which dating back to 1980 have featured a Bush male as one-half of a Republican ticket.
It also will be the first presidential contest since 1944 in which America's 41st President (born on this day in 1924) and the former First Lady (born on June 8 of the following year) didn't have a chance to cast a ballot.
And should the conversation at the family table turn to politics?
Politeness and civility are hallmarks of the Bush family, so no need to hide the carving knives.
Still, it won't a comfortable conversation.
That's because we don't know exactly where George W. Bush, America's 43rd President, stands on the Trump presidency. The New York Times would have you believe that he won't support Donald Trump's re-election. It didn't take long for a Bush 43 spokesman (Freddy Ford – what a great Texas name) to call the account "completely made up."
Less of a mystery would be 43's brother, Jeb ("Low Energy Jeb," in Trump-speak). A bruising Trump loss this fall would make good on the 2016 presidential hopeful's prophecy that a Trump presidency would not bode well for the Republican Party.
But apparently that's not a view held by George P. Bush, Jeb's elder son and the current Texas Land Commissioner.
George P. not only supports Trump's re-election, but sees the 45th President as "the only thing standing between America and socialism." He added, just to make sure he wasn't seen as part of any family agnosticism, "I endorsed President Trump in the 2016 election cycle and plan to do so again in 2020."
So is this as simple as a son deciding not to avenge his father — not publicly, at least?
Or, is it as obvious as something the Bush family understands, given its four-decade run in national politics: how best to stay in the game.
At some level, George P. Bush likely resents Trump's rough treatment of his father in the last election's Republican primaries. What loyal son wouldn't?
That said, the younger Bush is only a few months removed from his 44th birthday. His father was 41, back in 1994, when he first ran for governor of Florida. Four years later, at the age of 45, Jeb Bush won the job first denied to him in what otherwise was a landslide year for Republicans.
George P.'s uncle was 48 years old when, also in 1994, he ran for and was elected governor of Texas. At the age of 54, George W. Bush was elected to the same job his father held, albeit for only one four-year term (George H.W. Bush being 64 years of age when he succeeded Ronald Reagan in 1989).
The point is: judging by the previous generation's standard, George P. Bush is entering his political prime – and right at the time the voters of Texas might be looking for a new governor (Republican Greg Abbott may or may not seek a third term in 2022). As long as Republicans hold primaries in Texas, the wise move would seem not to turn on the incumbent Republican president.
Here's one way to look at Lone Star politics: this Quinnipiac University poll released earlier this month. Trump leads Democrat Joe Biden by a single point statewide, 44%-43% (Trump received 52.6% of the Texas vote in 2016). That might explain, in part, why Trump just dropped by a Dallas-area mega-church (as well as why future near-term presidential will take Trump to the likes of Arizona, Florida and North Carolina – 2016 Trump states that are a lighter shade of red these days).
While Trump received the support of only 11% of black voters and 32% of Hispanic voters surveyed in that Quinnipiac survey (Trump polled at 59% among white Texans), the President's support among Republicans clocked in at 87% (versus 90% of Democrats supporting Biden). That doesn't speak to an erosive GOP base. While Texas primaries are "open"(voters don't have to declare a political affiliation in order to participate), the major parties dominates their respective sides. Thus George P. Bush would be in a difficult spot, to put it mildly, were he to be trapped in a conversation about family loyalty versus party loyalty.
Moreover, there is a question about being authentically "Texan." It's not an issue so much for George P. Bush (Rice University and UT-Austin Law alum) as it was for his grandfather (the Yale-educated George H.W., despite the narrative of being his own man and relocating to the West Texas oil patch, still had to contend with snark-laden "Connecticut Yankee from King Henry's Court" media barbs as late his presidential runs).
For the younger Bush, the challenge in parting ways with Trump would be to risk being seen as too "establishment" – i.e., part of a Beltway crowd and mindset that never cared for Trump's style and demeanor. It's a little like the state's 2010 Republican gubernatorial primary, a nasty three-way affair in which then-Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson was turned into a characterization of what Lone Star conservatives least like about Washington – Hutchinson, by the way, supported by Bush 41. Swap out Hutchinson's vulnerabilities in that contest (pork barrel spending, bank bailouts) for party loyalty and the younger Bush could find himself in an untenable situation with Texas Republicans despite the famous surname.
One final thought on the Bush saga: I'm willing to wager that the son went to the father and asked for his counsel. And I'm willing to wager that the father told the son to do what he felt needed to be done – in some regards, not all that different from a phrased coined by a young Bill Clinton in a letter written to an ROTC director whose program he never wanted to join (in Clinton's words, "to maintain my political viability within the system").
George P. Bush's decision to stand by President Trump, weak poll numbers and slights directed at his relatives, demonstrates what Republican "viability" comes down to in 2020 in a state that tilts GOP.
Several Thanksgivings from now, we'll know if it was the wise political choice.