Growing up, no holiday book appealed to me as much as How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
Dr. Seuss’s scratchy illustrations and rhyming prose introduced the irascible protagonist and his impersonation of Santa Claus with distaste. The Grinch’s crusade against Christmas escalated in scale until, at the last minute, he underwent a change of heart.
When the book was released in 1957, the Grinch was praised as the children’s literature heir of Ebenezer Scrooge, the protagonist of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Both began as loners who opposed Christmas, only to discover its true spirit (or in Scrooge’s case, three of them). But where Scrooge initially thrived off capitalism, the Grinch resented it.
His equating of Christmas to its material trimmings fueled his attempt to “steal Christmas,” until his realization that the holiday had a greater meaning. His annoyance with Christmas was also due to the noise–something I could relate to, even in kindergarten.
How The Grinch Stole Christmas isn’t a particularly complex work of literature, but it’s captivated many generations. Inevitably, there would be three film adaptations–not counting 2024 slasher parody The Mean One. I rewatched all three to compare them and possibly discover the true spirit of Christmas.
How The Grinch Stole Christmas (1966)
This adaptation is the most faithful to the original book. That’s because Theodore Geisel, also known as Dr. Seuss, had creative control over it. The one major addition this 25-minute TV special makes is one of cinema’s greatest unprompted diss tracks: “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch.”
The scene has the Grinch (Boris Karloff, better known as Frankenstein) get musically insulted by Thurl Ravenscroft’s disembodied voice. In addition to having a great name, Ravenscroft voiced Tony the Tiger, creating an amusing mental image of Tony calling the Grinch a “sauerkraut and toadstool sandwich with arsenic sauce.”
This Grinch adaptation has an unfair advantage over its feature-length derivatives. It doesn’t need to fill its runtime with potentially mediocre subplots, because it’s only 25 minutes long.
This succinctness also makes the Grinch’s enlightenment seem abrupt, but it’s otherwise a Christmas classic for a reason. How The Grinch Stole Christmas knows it’s a winner.
Dr. Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas (2000)
I first saw this in elementary school, and I loathed it. “Why would you call it How The Grinch Stole Christmas and make it all about the Whos?” I complained.
25 years after this film graced theater screens, I rewatched it to realize I was right. It spends far too much time dwelling on Whoville’s interpersonal drama. In the book and TV special, the ambiguously humanoid Whos are like a Christmas hivemind. Only Cindy Lou Who, a gullible child, is given any individuality.
Here, Cindy Lou (Taylor Momsen) is a main character, and Who culture is expanded upon. The Who celebration of Christmas appears to be secular, but they have their own religion featuring a “Book of Who.” The apparent location of Whoville inside a snowflake adds some ambient cosmic horror.
The Grinch (Jim Carrey) is given a sad backstory and an improbable romance subplot. However, his railing against the commercialization of Christmas makes sense, and the film’s focus on the Whos means he isn’t the only one to discover its true meaning. He also doesn’t undergo a complete personality transplant, which is what I had a problem with in the book and TV special.
This film has an unsettling tone and a swaying, seasick camera. At first, I dismissed Jim Carrey as “doing too much,” but if I needed a torture expert to help me endure a stifling Grinch costume, I would probably also ham it up.
Regardless, Dr. Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas spends over half its runtime dawdling in Whoville before the Grinch even considers stealing Christmas. I no longer view this film with pure hatred, and I might even attend its limited theatrical rerelease. But it’s difficult not to get fed up with its false promises.
The Grinch (2018)
This is a pleasant, visually appealing film, but it has its flaws. They are first apparent in the 2018 Grinch’s design.
The 1966 Grinch was wrinkled, and his facial expressions were entertainingly contorted. His pelt’s bilious acid shade preceded 2024’s “brat green” in both look and intention. 2000’s Grinch was more gross: he lived in a lair (worked on by Venice art teacher Mr. Wright), ate glass, and broke the fourth wall.
By contrast, the 2018 Grinch, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, has a round, smooth face, as if Botoxed. He is an inoffensive lime green, has anxiety, and plays with his dog. His brightly lit cave could be featured in an Architectural Digest video. This Grinch is not a particularly mean one.
Another change made is the conspicuous Christianity in the Whos’ celebration of Christmas. Whether the Whos are human or still located in a snowflake is left unclear. I will always be confused by this.
To its credit, The Grinch gets to the actual plot faster than its live-action counterpart, and Tyler, the Creator’s remix of “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” is good. But it’s impossible to overlook the movie’s choice to give the Grinch a neat Freudian excuse for his personality.
Cumberbatch explained the motivation to explain the Grinch’s motivations, saying that characters like the Grinch “can’t just exist in a vacuum, even if they’re animated characters in a family film.”
I see his point, but the idea that the Grinch’s resistance to Christmas can only be justified through a conventionally traumatic backstory irritates me. Otherwise, this is a perfectly fine movie with too many screaming goat moments.
The Verdict
Ultimately, the best adaptation of The Grinch is the original 1966 one, and I don’t just say this out of nostalgia. Rather than trying to explain or remove the Grinch’s misanthropy, it let him be unpleasant.
However, the 2000 adaptation is less saccharine, the 2018 film does a good job of making the book feature-length, and both made his eventual turn to benevolence more believable. They both present different extremes in the story’s tone: 2000 Grinch is naughty and 2018 Grinch is nice. The 1966 TV special arguably depicts a middle ground.
The ’60s Grinch also seems to have had the largest cultural impact. In one week at Venice, I saw at least ten articles of clothing emblazoned with his sneering face.
Many of them were pajama pants, but I saw a great deal of socks from McDonalds’ viral Grinch-themed Happy Meal. Some of my family members tried to procure the meal’s pickle-flavored fries and coveted socks, only to report that it was sold out. The feeding frenzy around Grinch merchandise is, of course, deeply ironic.
The pre-redemption Grinch shown in so many pieces of paraphernalia was against the excesses of Christmastime. Still, his iconoclasm made him a symbol of the season. No matter how “mischievous” McDonalds may claim their Happy Meal is, their Grinch is devoid of truly Grinchlike properties.
Like Santa Claus in 1930s Coca-Cola advertising, his image is now used to sell products and symbolize the holiday. The Grinch stole Christmas, and then Christmas stole the Grinch.
Christmas today is often characterized by its material aspects: the trees, lights, wreaths, etc. They are viewed as essential parts of the holiday, but the recent impact of tariffs and cuts to SNAP benefits mean many people won’t be able to afford these goods.
Additionally, consumerism can (and does) lead to overconsumption. Every year, unwanted Christmas goods pile up in landfills. Small reductions in how many decorations and packaging materials are used could mitigate these effects, but many still opt for Whoville-esque maximalism.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas offers an alternative to material goods, where they’re still part of Christmas but no longer define it. That may be why the story still resonates to this day, though the Grinch’s charisma probably helps. After all, his most famous expression is a smile.
