( CNN ) -- This is for those who stayed . For the ones who , regardless of the reason , never picked up and moved . This is for those who right now are right where they always have been . Who are n't going home for the holidays , because home is where they already are . This week the airports , highways , train stations and bus depots will be jammed . Americans , as they always are in the week leading up to Christmas , are on the move . Many are heading home . So this may be as good a time as any to reflect on what that word -- `` home '' -- means . When people eagerly head home for the holidays , what is their true destination ? It is n't merely geographic . When you set foot again in the place you 're from , it 's not the street signs that warm you , or the sight of the public library or the town hall . Those are reminders , guideposts -- but that 's not why you 're there . Home feels the way it does because of the people who never left -- the people who , with gratitude , you can count on , the family and friends you 're coming home to . Without them , it 's just a dot on a map . They 're the ones who are too often taken for granted . The ones who , in an era of constant transience and relentless motion , elected long ago , for their own good reasons , against being footloose . Who dropped anchor early , and stayed put while others were departing . Just how taken for granted are they ? The U.S. Census Bureau , which keeps track of seemingly everything , does n't keep track of them . Robert B. Bernstein , a Census official , told me that there are no figures available for the number of people who have stayed in the same town for their entire lives . But there are clues -- clues about the impulse for allegiance -- to be found in related census data that Bernstein and I delved into together . Fifty-nine percent of Americans live in the same state where they were born . Midwesterners are the most loyal to where they come from : 70.2 percent live in the state of their birth . The Western states manage to keep only 49.3 percent of those who were born there . If you live in Louisiana , you 're among the 78.8 percent of .your fellow residents who were born there , the highest percentage in the U.S. , followed by Michigan at 76.6 percent and Ohio at 75.1 percent . Nevada has the lowest percentage of people born there : 24.3 , followed by Florida , next-lowest , with 35.2 percent and Arizona with 37.7 percent . Nationwide , according to the most recent census numbers available , 45.3 million people live in a different house from the one where they lived a year ago , and 6.7 million of them live in a different state . Perhaps the most beloved holiday movie is `` It 's a Wonderful Life , '' in which George Bailey , played by Jimmy Stewart , is a man who never moved away from Bedford Falls , and who is not without occasional pangs of regret about it . Generations of audiences have silently cheered for him . But the Jimmy Stewart character had a motion-picture camera trained on him ; in real life , the men and women who stay often do so with no audience to applaud their fidelity to place . We live in a society in which wanderlust is considered an unchallenged virtue . For generations , it has been said approvingly that someone has `` set off to make it big , '' has `` gone off to conquer the world . '' Getting out , seeking fresh horizons , has been made a celebrated and acclaimed goal , seldom questioned . And those who stay behind ? They do so for a variety of reasons : genuine love of a place ; family obligations ; a job that feels steady and safe . You sense , though , that some who stay may , like George Bailey , from time to time have second thoughts . Were they reluctant to roll the dice ? Did an opportunity somewhere bigger and brighter open and then close before they worked up the resolve to say yes ? Did they tell themselves that tomorrow they would make the grand move so many times that all the tomorrows finally ran out ? Every person has his or her own answer . In these December weeks , in town after American town , people will come home for the holidays , and it will feel like home because of the faces that remain there , the voices that are so familiar . Do those who stay ever ask themselves whether they have missed out on something in the wider world beyond ? Perhaps . Human nature dictates that we often fixate on the path not taken . But a town would not be a town were it not for those who vote in favor of it every day of their lives with their continued presence , who make it feel solid and permanent not just because they know the place so well , but because they know themselves just as well , and are confident enough in who they are that they do n't necessarily have to look elsewhere for affirmation . The world changes and becomes barely recognizable ; even the tiniest towns transform themselves over time . If you 're heading home for the holidays this week , you may notice that the old movie theater is a coffee shop now , or that the pharmacy has become a bank branch . The sight of those faces , though , older but somehow forever young ; the sound of those voices , voices you would know if you heard them anywhere on the planet , but that , now and always , are specific to this one and only place . . . This is a time , and a season , to be thankful for those voices . For those faces . For the ones who chose to stay . As the holidays arrive , you may be coming home . They -- in every way that counts -- are home . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Bob Greene .
Bob Greene says people going home for the holidays look forward to familiar faces . He says sometimes people take for granted those who choose not to go away . Those who do may have regrets , but they are the solid foundation of communities . Greene : When we go home , we should be thankful for the people who already are home .