Fool's Gold: Stuffed

The moving traditions of the season.
By Zach Hively

Thanksgiving is the one pure North American holiday, free of politics of commercialism of historical accuracy. Most people like to celebrate the warm-and-fuzzy animal sacrifice side of Thanksgiving. And that’s fine; America is nothing if not a nation of moderation, so we should be allowed one single meal of overindulgence each year.

But what many don’t realize is that Thanksgiving was not founded on comfort food, closed retail stores, and the Detroit Lions losing. For starters, the Lions got good, apparently?
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But also, the holiday’s roots are much more sinister than a kindergarten play would have you believe. If Thanksgiving: The Origins were a Netflix original series, it would be shot entirely in black, there would be lots of Meaningful Expressions, all your favorite characters would die, and you would be thankful that there was no Season Two.

The historical time we romanticize as the First Thanksgiving was but one instance of the most dreaded circumstance known to mankind, not counting impending genocide, which was also a factor. These gritty, dramatic, white pilgrims had packed up their worldly belongings and relocated to a strange new land. When they arrived, they had no food to eat, nor plates to eat food from, because everything they owned was still packed in moving boxes.

This predicament was not the pilgrims’ choice. No one chooses to move gladly. The original Thanksgiving pilgrims probably liked England a lot; they liked it so much, in fact, that they kept naming American places after English ones, like Norwich and Worcheseshestersheshire. But they had to move because the English wanted to get rid of all their stodgiest religious types.

I am likewise a modern-day pilgrim.

I have, more than once in my day, been persecuted out of my home by landlords who were selling their houses so they—and this is the problem with capitalism—could move closer to their grandchildren.

This typically left me searching for a new home where I would be willing to bathe without wearing shower shoes. It also left me packing all my worldly possessions, which if you don’t think about it too much is a lot like sailing across the Atlantic Ocean in a wooden vessel, only without the luxury views. 

It’s been five years since my last move, and I still have most of my belongings packed away. For this half a decade, I’ve remained too exhausted from thinking about moving to dig through boxes for my Thanksgiving cookware, or a spoon for cereal.
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Not coincidentally, I am commemorating Thanksgiving in my house in the truest spirit of the festival: by eating peanut butter sandwiches on a table made of cardboard.

This sort of predicament is exactly what the pilgrims faced. Left alone, they would have starved before they figured out which box held their Crock-Pot. Heck, they didn’t even know for sure where they’d packed their full-length pantaloons or the buckles for their tennis shoes. 

You can often tell that one is moving just by examining one’s clothing. The functional wardrobe of a typical human being is repurposed during a move: socks pad fragile chachkies, coffee mugs are mummy-wrapped in underwear, and dress pants function nicely as furniture blankets. So one wears whatever combination of dish towels and house slippers one can successfully locate until the boxes are unpacked or one moves again, whichever happens first. In fact, little-known historical tidbit: the pilgrims strapped belts to their hats because they could not find where they packed all their elastic hat bands.

Fortunately for most of us, our moving-era outfits are not immortalized in elementary school historical recreations. But wardrobe oddities are not even the most challenging part of moving. There’s also that long, slow realization of how much extraneous stuff you have in your possession. That is not the most challenging part, either, but it’s the part I want to talk about.

I went into my last round of moving with the mindset that I would pare down all unnecessary belongings and live a simpler life for it. But then packing up the old place took longer than the three hours I had budgeted for it, so I ended up stuffing everything in Costco boxes, canvas bags, suitcases, shopping carts, the glovebox in the car, and my pockets. I can hardly imagine how the Mayflower looked with miscellaneous coat hangers poking out of every hold.

Now I’d like you to ponder the stereotypical, traditional, modern Thanksgiving for just a moment. Imagine the dining room. Do you envision even a single box with Sharpie scrawl graffitied on the side? 

No—because the true spirit of Thanksgiving is being grateful that, wherever you are, you are not moving. So please, when you give thanks around the table, remember those of us less fortunate. And if you feel compelled by white guilt to lend a hand, please find someone more deserving of help than I am.

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This Thanksgiving, I’d like to say out loud (in writing) how grateful I am for you all, my readers.
I do this for me. But I also wouldn’t do this at all, without deadlines. And my obligation to make sure you remember who I am keeps me on deadline.

But more than that, knowing you all are out there reading, sometimes even enjoying & laughing at & sharing what I do--that’s what keeps me going.
So. Thank you. With all I’ve got—thank you.
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