Christmas can wear you out, and the stress and frayed nerves make you wonder why you go through it all. Don't despair, though. That yuletide soul-searching can inspire — to quote one of the most-loved holiday stories — a "wonderful, awful idea."
One morning on the day after Christmas, Theodor (aka: Dr. Seuss) Geisel, the author of "The Cat in the Hat," "Green Eggs and Ham" and a host of other children's classics, felt disheartened, convinced he had lost the meaning of the holiday.
Geisel realized that his gloomy mood mirrored the attitude of a disagreeable creature he had created a few years earlier — the Grinch. Thus, an idea for another book was born, one that could help him rediscover the truth about Christmas.
His work on "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" would not be complete until he joined forces with animator Chuck Jones, famous for his Looney Tunes shorts, and the celebrated horror actor Boris Karloff. When "The Grinch" made its TV debut on Dec. 18, 1966, it became so popular that a new word was added to the holiday lexicon.
Even after a half-century, "The Grinch" has few detractors, even when considered in a cultural context. Take, for example, the annual "war on Christmas" debates, epitomized by arguments over wishing someone a "Merry Christmas" vs. "Happy Holidays." In the perceived divide over religious and secular holiday celebrations, "The Grinch" has a unique ability to satisfy both camps.
"The Grinch" is often described as secular. The program never mentions the birth of Jesus. In fact, a direct reference to Scripture would have been out of place among the peculiar, insectlike residents of Whoville and their Tah Tinkers, Floo Floobers, Bizzel Binks and Dafflers. Geisel even commented that he had a hard time finding the right note to end his Christmas tale because he did not want to make it a "religious tract." Concluding that "The Grinch" is theologically silent, however, is a mistake.
Anyone willing to risk falling into the trap of overanalyzing Dr. Seuss' books might begin by noting that they have often been used to teach Christian doctrine, even though Geisel did not consider himself a highly religious person. Still, he was steeped in Christianity while growing up in Springfield, Mass.
Geisel not only attended his mother's Episcopal church but his father's Lutheran congregation. His earliest experiences of Christmas came when he joined the other members of the town's German-American community to sing "Stille Nacht" and "O Tannenbaum." Later, at Dartmouth and Oxford, he participated in chapel services.
