In our family, mom and dad are Longhorns, our first two kids are

Bob Wells once spoke with a smile and a glimmer of rivalry: “In our family, mom and dad are Longhorns, our first two kids are Aggies and we’re hoping our last one is a Longhorn. It gives us family fun on Thanksgiving Day.” What seems a playful note about college allegiance reveals a greater truth about kinship, tradition, and the way healthy rivalry can bind a family together. His words remind us that even in differences, there is joy, and that love is not diminished by rivalry but often strengthened by it.

The origin of this saying rests in one of America’s most storied traditions: the rivalry between the University of Texas Longhorns and the Texas A&M Aggies. For more than a century, their football game was held on Thanksgiving Day, and it became a ritual that reached far beyond the field. Families across Texas, divided in their loyalties, gathered around televisions or stadium seats, cheering, teasing, and laughing in the midst of competition. For the Wells family, as for many others, this rivalry became not a cause for anger but a source of playful unity.

This interplay of rivalry and love has deep roots in human history. The ancient Greeks, who gave us the Olympic Games, understood that competition was not merely about victory, but about excellence, honor, and the strengthening of bonds among city-states. Families, too, have long embraced such rivalries, from sibling contests in the home to clans competing at festivals. The rivalry brings tension, yes, but it also sharpens affection; for when the contest is over, the bond remains. So it is with the Longhorns and Aggies at the Thanksgiving table: a clash of colors and chants, ending with shared food and laughter.

The wisdom of Wells’s words lies in the recognition that fun can emerge from difference. Too often, people see disagreement as division, but within a family, difference can be a source of richness. The Longhorn parent cheering against the Aggie child does not wound the bond of kinship—it deepens it, creating stories and memories told for years afterward. The family feast becomes more than turkey and pie; it becomes a theater of identity, a safe space where rivalry is celebrated, not condemned.

Consider also the lesson of President Abraham Lincoln, who established Thanksgiving as a national holiday during the Civil War, a time when America was more bitterly divided than ever before. He understood that even amidst difference—even amidst war—the act of gathering in gratitude could bind hearts. Wells’s family rivalry is but a smaller echo of that same truth: that celebration can endure even in disagreement, and that unity is not destroyed by difference but enriched by it.

The lesson here is clear: embrace difference within your family and transform it into joy. Whether in politics, in sports, in taste, or in tradition, do not let differences become a wall of silence. Let them become a spark of laughter, a ritual of teasing, a reminder that love is greater than loyalty to team or creed. As Wells teaches, the true victory on Thanksgiving Day is not on the football field, but at the family table, where rivalry is softened by food, gratitude, and affection.

So, O listener, carry this wisdom into your own gatherings. If your family is divided by loyalties or opinions, let the rivalry be playful, not bitter. Laugh with one another, not at one another. Share your colors, your chants, your teams—but share, above all, your love. For when the game is done and the meal is shared, the trophies and scores fade, but the memory of joy endures. This is the teaching of Bob Wells: that family rivalry, when grounded in love, becomes not division, but the sweetest form of unity.