THE GRINCH VARIATIONS

"How the Grinch Stole Christmas" is a classic, and this documentary narrated by Phil Hartman sheds some light on it's creation.

If you're a certain age you probably remember watching the Grinch on TV over the holidays (We're talking the original Dr. Seuss cartoon, not the ugly, ill-advised horror show starring Jim Carrey). Everyone loved the Grinch. The animation was great, the story was fun, and Boris Karloff narrated. There was even a cute, overworked little dog. It was brilliant.

the original book

Where did it all begin? The Grinch is nearly as old as Christmas itself. Well, not quite. The wonderfully weird Christmas tale was first published in 1957, and the television cartoon came out in 1966. Since then, children of all ages have pulled up hassocks and throw pillows and watched this wicked cave-dwelling creature with a heart "two sizes too small." He may have been a bad banana with a greasy black peel, but he came around in the end. See, there was a message hidden in the tale like a little green citron in a fruitcake. It was a message we snot-nosed kids may have missed or chose to ignore but ingested nonetheless, and I'd like to think that we were somehow affected by that weird little citron and moved toward greater understanding, growth, truth, beauty, and the possibility of change--at least for the duration of the cartoon. Then we started kicking and screaming again like the brats that we were.

Thanks, Dr. Seuss.