What, Child, Is This?

Dr. Seuss's How the Grinch Lost Christmas! (Classic Seuss) Hardcover – Picture Book, September 5, 2023

by Alastair Heim (Author), Aristides Ruiz (Illustrator)

Though it's been out for two years, I discovered this only yesterday. I had decided to give Kaitlyn and her kids my old copy of How the Grinch Stole Christmas. It was $6.95 when I bought it in 1985 (which I thought excessive at the time); I wondered how much a copy was going for today (it was about $18). That's where I saw this.

What impressed me immediately was that here were two obvious lies. It's not Dr. Seuss's, and it's not Classic Seuss. Oh, Theodor Giesel and his heirs might own the rights to the Grinch 'franchise,' but he didn't write it and he didn't draw it and he didn't approve it; and if he had wanted a sequel he had decades to write one before he passed away. 

The story seems to be it's one year after the old book, and the Grinch is trying to prove to the Whos how full he is of the Christmas spirit. All his material efforts, however, fail to re-awaken enthusiasm; he is suffering a 'post-conversion' let-down. Apparently it takes Cindy Lou Who (who is now three) to rekindle his warm and fuzzies.

The Grinch has been becoming a larger and larger pop cultural presence at Christmas, an ironic icon for those not as enthusiastic about the Yuletide celebration or its spiritual connotations, taking his place along with the pre-Ghosts Scrooge and Krampus as the more bitter shadow side of the season. Lately there has been a trend of people dressing up as Jim Carey's Grinch and frightening little children. For fun.

It's not the redeemed and happy Grinch that is inspiring this trend. It seems sad that the Grinch has to 'lose' Christmas again and again to be culturally popular. And now it has been enshrined in a duplicitous sequel that nobody asked for. If Dr. Seuss were alive today, he would never stop rolling in his grave.