Were his shoes too tight? Don’t get me wrong, I love the Grinch, and as a child I knew Christmas could not be very far away if the network was running this very strange cartoon about hate, violence, bigotry, and intolerance. The Grinch is a very odd character who has lived in self-imposed exile in a cave on the outskirts of Whoville. What the Grinch is, exactly, is a bit of a mystery, but in the world of Dr. Seuss species identification or confusion is usually of the first order. In fact, Dr. Seuss has been known to invent his own species of beings when he wants to. The Grinch, whatever he is, is an embittered old cranky dude who lives alone with his dog. He hates Christmas, which is no secret to the billions of people who have seen the cartoon. He cooks up a diabolical plan to rob the Who down in Whoville of the Christmas by stealing the trappings of their celebration. He lacks, of course, a fundamental understanding of why people celebrate Christmas: the birth of Christ, the messiah. The trappings are nothing more than that, trappings. After loading up an enormous old sled and traipsing up the side of his mountain to his hideout, he hears the Who come and begin to sing. His epiphany causes his heart to grow because of the love he finally feels for his fellow man who can still celebrate the birth of their savior even when there are no trappings. The cartoon is an interesting riff on the consumer culture which has ironically spawned the very cartoon of which I write. Nothing is more hyper-consumerist than television, the very medium into which the cartoon of the Grinch is inscribed. The commercial advertisements that pepper the screening of the Grinch completely undermine the message of the cartoon. The hyper-consumer event that has become the Christmas present buying season, starting with Black Friday just after Thanksgiving, is completely out of control, but nobody seems to either car or to even feign caring. Our economy necessarily depends on a happy retail December so that people can work, people can buy, and people can later pay their bills. In fact, questioning the very nature of consumer America is almost anti-patriotic, if not downright anti-American. Yet the consumer society which the Grinch hates is not sustainable in the long term. Unlimited growth is not the logical outcome of a consumerist society which has finite limits unless the consumers go into perpetual debt to sustain their vicious habits of buying every last thing that they see and end up wanting and desiring because advertising and marketing are infinitely stronger than the human will to control itself. Desire, temptation, envy are a big part of human weakness, and most of what we do is motivated by one of those negative motivations. The Grinch associates the happiness of the Who with all things they have bought–toys, trees, decoration, food. Lost in the midst of that rampant out-of-control consumerism is the only reason for celebrating Christmas: the birth of a baby, the beginning of a life. If there was anything that Jesus despised on this earth it was rampant, out-of-control consumerism inside the temple. He tears through the temple, upending tables and chasing away the moneylenders and vendors who were making a living by exploiting the needs of temple visitors. The Grinch underestimates, however, the spirituality of the Who, who celebrate in spite of him, the Grinch, I mean. So we watch this cartoon, dismiss its message off hand, and we go out shopping afterwards, unwilling to do with less, or, in fact, to do with just what we need, falling into gluttony, avarice, greed, and ego. I like the Grinch because he asks the hard questions about our society, but his analysis falls short of his objectives. Christmas comes after all.