Ted Streuli,
The Daily Record Newswire
My 4-year-old has discovered the Grinch. There’s an entertaining disparity in that his 7-year-old brother prefers the original, animated version of the Dr. Seuss classic while the younger one likes the live-action Jim Carey version.
But the most joyful part of the new fascination is the 4-year-old’s insistence that I read the original Seuss text every night at bedtime. I have developed quite an amusing Grinch voice for those parts of the story.
It’s led me to be a bona fide Grinch expert, which will happen if you read it aloud over, and over, and over. You notice things. For example, when the Grinch is doing his evil work in the first Who household, the one where he encounters little Cindy Lou Who, the first reference is to the Grinch using the chimbley. I read that as written for the first time the other night and the 4-year-old, who cannot read a single syllable, corrected me promptly.
“It’s chimney, Daddy.”
“No it’s not,” I said with full parental righteousness. “See? It says chimbley.”
In all ensuing references, Seuss wrote chimney. I do not know why. And I do not know why it took me approximately 73 readings before I read chimbley correctly. At least I’ve finally convinced him that the poem really does say roast beast.
I remember the animated TV special most clearly, although I had not watched it, much less read the story, in many years. Then I found myself on the upper end of the parent-child thing, and poof! I can tell you that Cindy Lou is not yet two, that the dog’s name is Max, that the antlers are tied to his head with red thread and that the name of the mountain on which the Grinch intends to dump all of Whoville’s Christmas is Mount Crumpit (rhymes with “dump it”).
My childhood memory is dominated by the Grinch. I took away what I was supposed to: that the Grinch was a mean, evil creature (age 53 in case you don’t have your own 4-year-old reading excuse), that he tried to stop Christmas from coming, and that when his heart grew (three sizes) he had an epiphany and returned all the presents and food to the Whos.
But rereading the story as an adult, the Grinch’s character, or lack thereof, isn’t what leaps off the page. What does is the singing.
I’ll refresh your memory. The Grinch hates Christmas because the Whos all open their presents, the children make lots of noise, they have a big feast and then all the Whos in Whoville go outside, hold hands and sing. Or, as the Grinch puts it, they SING SING SING SING!
And when the Grinch has stolen all the presents and all the food for the feast, when all he’s left is a crumb too small even for a mouse to eat, and he’s loaded his ramshackle sled and hauled it all to the top of Mt. Crumpit, he pauses so he can hear the Whos’ agony. He expects to hear them all cry BOO HOO.
And what he hears instead is all the Whos singing, despite the loss of the presents, the wrappings, the tinsel, the trappings! And it is the singing that causes the Grinch’s one-size-too-small heart to grow three sizes that day.
It’s the singing. That’s the part the Grinch couldn’t steal. And it’s that vocal manifestation of love and celebration that turns the Grinch around, albeit only after he puzzles for hours until his puzzler is sore.
And it made me think that maybe that’s why we hold Christmas music so dear; it’s what pulls us back down the mountain.
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