Everyone has seen Dr. Seuss’s “How The Grinch Stole Christmas.” It is a holiday TV staple. Every Friday after Thanksgiving I go over to my best friend Dok’s house and help him and his wife, Lucy, clean and then we watch “The Grinch.” The animation is beautiful, the Seussian rhyming is at it’s best, with Boris Karloff narrating and Thul Ravenscroft singing “You’re A Mean One, Mister Grinch.” For years I thought Boris Karloff was doing the singing. I didn’t realize it was Ravenscroft until after he died.
This song plays while the Grinch in all of his grinchiness steals Christmas from the poor Whos down in Whoviille. The descriptors are excellent.
He’s called a bad banana with a greasy black peel, a nasty wasty skunk, the king of sinful sots, a crooked jerky jockey, and my all time favorite insult:
You’re a three-decker sauerkraut
And toadstool sandwich
With arsenic sauce.
You can’t come up with a better insult than that. The thing is we use “Grinch” as an insult, just like we do “Scrooge”. But like “The Christmas Carol”, “The Grinch” is a redemptive tale. The Grinch was a heartless angry loner who saw joy and hated it. He was a creature who mistreated poor Max something awful. I always felt sorry for that dog. But after doing one of the most heinous things, stealing Christmas and lying to Little Cindy Lou Who he then sees the love of the Whos down in Whoville, singing even without ribbons and tags but just for the love of Christmas and the love of each other. He was changed him and his heart grew three sizes.
But when we think of a Grinch, we don’t think about the smiling redemptive character that cuts the roast beast at the end of the show. We think of the bitter vindictive creature. Why is that? He was the Grinch before and He was the Grinch after just with a larger heart.
So I think the time of using it as an insult should end. There is a parody of this song “Your A Mean One, Mr. Trump”on YouTube. I won’t post because it uses foul language.
Speaking of Trump, his tax bill is very Grinchy and many of the words used to describe the Grinch could be used to describe Trump. I am praying that he will have a redemptive journey and that his ego will shrink two sizes and his heart with grow three sizes.
It is unlikely. But I am a Christian and I believe in miracles.
Read more: Soundtrack Artists – You’re A Mean One, Mr. Grinch! Lyrics | MetroLyrics
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