Five Life Lessons Learned From How The Grinch Stole Christmas

Christmas characters are meant to be endlessly malleable. Santa Claus has been jolly, depressed, mean, fat, skinny, and he's been played by Tim Allen and Kurt Russell. We've seen enough riffs on George Bailey and Ebenezer Scrooge to last a lifetime. But it's different with The Grinch, the green, furry grump who lived high in the mountains above Whoville, sneering down at his neighbors and their Christmas cheer. The Grinch has existed in four distinct forms in pop culture: first as a Dr. Seuss story, then as a 1966 animated TV special, then as a 2000 Jim Carrey live-action blockbuster, and finally as a 2018 computer-animated feature film voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch. Yet, while all these other Christmas characters can survive endless permutations and being translated a lot, the Grinch, who lives just north of Whoville, cannot. The 1966 Grinch is the iconic one, and all others (including the original story, with its non-green Grinch) are merely pretenders.

Accept no substitutes! That's the first lesson I ever learned from the Grinch. Here are four more picked up from a lifetime of watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas at least once every holiday season:

Location, Location, Location

"Every Who down in Whoville liked Christmas a lot, but the Grinch, who lived just north of Whoville did not." That's the first line of narration in How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and it's the root of the whole problem. The Whos, loving Christmas as they do, in that very uncomplicated, one might say simple way, raise up a whole huge fuss every year when their favorite holiday comes. Which they have every right to do, of course. But when they get to clanging and honking away on the Electrowhocarioschnooks, it gets to be a lot.

Here's the big lesson, though: before you settle on the cave you want to live in for your adult years, go that extra mile and do the research. How close are public transportation options? What about public schools in the area? You might think you don't want to have kids, but who knows in the future! And definitely make sure that you're not directly upwind from a community of terminally cheerful, song-prone Whos. I don't care how spacious that cave is, it's not worth it.

Dress for the Job You Want, Not the Job You Have

I don't have time to unpack the explanations for why the Grinch's everyday attire appears to just be… well, nothing at all, while the Whos are all fully dressed. But I do want to make sure we all take inspiration from the Grinch for knowing that before he got to the job of stealing Christmas from the Whos, he needed to sew himself a costume. No, his scissor skills aren't all that great, but he ends up sewing together a perfectly accurate and durable Santa Claus hat and a coat. And it comes in handy when he has to lie to little Cindy Lou Who about his identity. The Grinch followed the old adage: dress for the job you want, not the job you have. And it worked for him!

Dogs > Cats

I'm sorry to all the cat people out there, but How the Grinch Stole Christmas offers incontrovertible proof of dog superiority in the form of Max. While mostly sneered at by his master, Max acts at various times as a pincushion, a mirror-holder, a makeshift reindeer, a sled co-pilot, a sled-puller, a bag-catcher, and at all times, a living, breathing conscience for the Grinch to look at and know, deep down, that he isn't doing the right thing. Max knew what was good and right all along. And to make an even larger point: there is no way that a cat would have done any of this. A cat would have disinterestedly dropped that pincushion, found a nook inside Grinch's cave, and not emerged until Boxing Day. (Oh God, I bet the Whos have some really annoying Boxing Day traditions.)

How to Properly Conjugate the Verb "To Stink"

"You're a Mean One, Mister Grinch" is one of the classic Christmas songs, in part because of what a carnival of vocabulary it is. You could keep a grade-schooler busy for days learning the meaning of words like "nauseate," "mangled," "arsenic," "deplorable," in addition to a number of incredibly evocative metaphors. All kidding aside, it's fantastic to have an animated holiday tradition for children that works so intently to expand kids' word power like this. Sure, it might lead to the odd child testing his or her boundaries by telling mom she's got termites in her smile, but that's a pretty small price to pay for the uptick in Verbal SAT scores for generations of Grinch fans. AND they'll learn how to break "to stink down into "stink / stank / stunk"!

How the Grinch Stole Christmas airs Wednesday, December 25th at 8:00 PM on NBC

Joe Reid is the senior writer at Primetimer and co-host of the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast. His work has appeared in Decider, NPR, HuffPost, The Atlantic, Slate, Polygon, Vanity Fair, Vulture, The A.V. Club and more.