“He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count ‘em up: what then? The happiness he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.”
Scrooge says this to the Ghost of Christmas Past about his childhood employer, Fezziwig. It’s a great description of a person who, through the generosity of his spirit, makes everyone’s lives just a little bit happier. Fezziwig isn’t Donald Trump, going around and paying off people’s mortgages. He isn’t Ty Pennington, showing up with a bullhorn on your front lawn one morning to announce that he’s going to tear down your old house and build you a mansion. Fezziwig is a man who shakes your hand warmly, probably hugs you, and makes you feel as if you matter. You’re important.
I know I’m not a Fezziwig. I have more in common with the pre-redeemed Scrooge at the moment. Always worried about finances and bills. Not wanting to buy even a dollar Diet Coke at McDonald’s because that money could be spent on something necessary. Something important. I’m ashamed to say that I understand the miser mentality. It comes from constant fretting about things like mortgages and car payments and gas bills. I’m sure the current economic situation in the world is going to produce a generation of Ebenezer Scrooges instead of a generation of Fezziwigs.
This morning, I’m going to read Wendy McClure’s book The Wilder Life some more. I’m just as engaged with the work as when I started reading it. It sort of dovetails into my Fezziwig versus Scrooge musings. You see, McClure embraces the simplicity of the “Laura World,” as she calls it. McClure realizes that the world Laura Ingalls Wilder created was based on fact, but was mostly fictional. As she delves more and more deeply into the reality of the Little House series, McClure realizes how much Wilder left out or embellished in her books. There’re problems with racism and starvation and homesteading and greedy railroads and Native American treaties that just don’t enter the doors of the Ingalls log cabin. If they do enter the cabin, these subjects are veiled, at best, or are painfully obvious to a 21st century reader, at worst.
McClure, however, isn’t really looking for the truth behind the fiction, even though she encounters truth at every turn. McClure wants to recapture the Laura World she remembers as a child. Innocent. A little scary. Above all, uncomplicated by modern life’s complications. She’s looking, in a way, for a world populated by Fezziwigs. The wolves may be baying at the door, but, inside, you’re safe, warm, and important. As Dickens writes, the Fezziwig happiness isn’t about money. The Laura World happiness isn’t about money, either. It’s about the undying human capacity for love.
When I drove my daughter to school this morning, this is what I was thinking about. I realized I loved making my daughter and son breakfast. Getting them dressed for school. Packing their lunches and backpacks. Saying things like, “Do you have your snow pants? Your boots?” All these “little” things that don’t cost a cent, but that show my children I love them and care about them. That’s what the Laura World is all about. That’s what Fezziwig is all about. That’s what Christmas is all about. Caring about the people around you—family, friends, acquaintances, and strangers. There’s nothing wrong with keeping that alive all year ‘round.
At least Saint Marty doesn’t think so.
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