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The Anti-Grinch

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"...I bet I could improve it too, and that's exactly what I'll do!"

Malcom: My god! I didn't think you'd need to travel to another dimension to prove your love of Christmas!
Nostalgia Critic: Well this is set to be the dimension that loves Christmas the most, and I have to let my love for this holiday destroy them all. Nobody loves Christmas more than me... to death.

There are people who hate Christmas; those who want to see it end in flames and screams and sad faces. But one cannot accomplish such a thing as ruining Christmas so easily, as the spirit of Christmas is often too powerful for one person to ruin it so thoroughly.

But sometimes the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Enter this guy.

The Anti-Grinch, alternatively known as the Anti-Scrooge, loves Christmas. Loves it in the "going out of their way to make it special" kind of way. They might even want to add to it and share it with the world. This usually involves playing Santa Claus as he or she brings presents to all of the good little boys and girls.

This has a history of backfiring, as usually what they bring to the table isn't really something appropriate for the occasion, poisoning the season and those warm-fuzzy feelings. This is mostly out of ignorance of their actions, the Anti-Grinch realizing their mistake and fixing it at the very last second.

A variant of this is a character's overzealouness for Christmas driving them to wish for it to come every day, but eventually learn that way too much of a good thing can ruin it for everybody.

Consider the opposite of The Grinch and how he failed to steal Christmas. The Anti-Grinch, by contrast, doesn't set out to steal anything, but otherwise pulls off exactly what The Grinch deliberately set out to do.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Films — Animation 
  • Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas has Mickey enjoy over-decorating his house so much that he ends up scaring Pluto away after getting irritated when everything goes wrong. It takes Pluto ending up at the North Pole and serving as part of Santa's Workshop for him to come to his senses.
  • Jack Skellington from The Nightmare Before Christmas stumbles upon Christmas Town one day after getting bored with Halloween, and instantly falls in love with the idea of Christmas. He loves Christmas so much that he tries taking over for the year, only to terrify the ignorant masses with his gifts mail-order from Halloween Town. It gets so bad the human authorities shoot Jack out of the sky, literally knocking Jack to his senses about how badly he messed up the holiday.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Depending on how you interpret Christmas with the Kranks, it's a bit Zig-Zagged. The Kranks' neighbors don't seem meant to be seen this way, but they badger the Kranks into conforming to the big over-the-top neighborhood celebration, leaving us with the aesop that The Complainer Is Always Wrong. Many viewers observe that Strawman Has a Point — the Kranks just wanted a quiet family getaway, but the neighbors' forced holiday cheer ruined their plans.
  • Kate's father in Gremlins. According to her story, he dressed up as Santa to slide down their chimney to surprise her and her mother with gifts, but broke his neck and got stuck in the chimney instead. He wasn't discovered until days later. The experience traumatized Kate and understandably ruined her outlook on the Christmas season.
  • In The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, Mantis and Drax want to give Quill a proper Christmas, since they don't think he's had one since he was abducted from Earth. For reasons that almost make sense at the time, they decide this means kidnapping Kevin Bacon and giving him to Quill as a present. Needless to say, Quill points out that they're just committing another abduction.
  • The Magical Christmas Tree, Strickling hates Christmas until he is visted by magical ghosts of Christmas, so he decides to change his ways, and bring peace and joy to everyone. It does not go well.
  • Clark Griswold on both National Lampoon's Vacation and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, where his over-zealousness to give his family the best experience ever come hell or high water overrides said family's desire to enjoy a simpler experience and completely makes their lives a living hell (to not mention wrecks their car/house). Clark's son Rusty follows the tradition in the 2015 Vacation remake-slash-continuation.
  • After the opening origin story stretch of Santa Claus: The Movie, the plot is driven primarily by one of his elves, Patch. He is a forward-thinking inventor who believes he can bring the North Pole into The Present Day with an automated toy production system, but while it initially works, everyone realizes too late that many of the toys it produces are defective, spoiling an entire Christmas season. Guilt-ridden and believing Santa no longer likes him, Patch becomes determined to prove he can get Christmas right and descends into the human world to produce, market, and distribute (via a Flying Car) a lollipop that temporarily induces flight. Unfortunately, as he is a Wide-Eyed Idealist he puts his trust in a crooked toymaker, B.Z., who agrees to bankroll him so that he can exploit his inventions for cold hard cash and become a Villain with Good Publicity. Patch's project is so successful come the next Christmas that it upstages Santa, sending Santa into a blue funk. When Patch realizes via a young human friend of Santa that he not only didn't need to win back Santa's favor but actually made things worse, he decides to return to the North Pole with the next treat he was designing for B.Z. — candy canes that are even more powerful than the lollipops — and give them to Santa to distribute, figuring it will be a "best of both worlds" situation. Unfortunately there's the little matter that the candy canes explode when exposed to high temperatures (something only the villains know of at the time), leading to a climactic Chase Scene as Santa and his reindeer pursue the car...

    Literature 
  • Death standing in for the Hogfather, in the Discworld novel of the same name, has elements of this, such as very nearly giving a girl a real sword rather than a wooden one, and putting a pony in a second-floor flat. However, it's ultimately subverted, as it turns out Death's brand of Literal Mindedness means he grasps what Hogswatch is supposed to be about much more clearly than most people, and worries at the things everyone else accepts as part of the season, but which are actually a bit off (little match girls dying in the snow, smug kings offloading their leftovers onto bewildered peasants, and the Hogfather only giving children the sort of presents the family could have afforded anyway.)

    Puppet Shows 
  • In the Sesame Street special Elmo Saves Christmas, Elmo wishes that it was Christmas every day. Cut to a year later, and everyone is broke because they have to buy Christmas presents every day, the Fix-It shop is out of business because they can't be open on Christmas, carolers have lost their voices, Big Bird is despondent because Snuffy is away for the holiday (forever!), and the Count is tired of counting Christmases. Santa himself is a wreck. Elmo gets a chance to press the Reset Button, therefore saving Christmas — when he was the one who ruined it.

    Web Comics 
  • Good Girl from League of Super Redundant Heroes always goes totally nuts over Christmas and tends to go overboard, so much that her friends delay reminding her of the date as long as possible.

    Web Original 

    Western Animation 
  • The Cuphead Show!: In "A Very Devil Christmas", the Devil is shown to love Christmas. And he loves it because it gives him so many joyous holiday moments... to ruin and cause mischief. And he loves the idea of being given Christmas gifts. The only thing he hates about Christmas is actually being nice and jolly, which he is forced to do as Santa, in order for him to be on the Nice List to be given a toy train.
  • The Fairly OddParents!: Timmy Turner wishes for Christmas to occur every day (365 straight days of Christmas). This backfires as after about 15 days, everyone had grown tired of neverending Christmases, and the fairies are unable to cancel the wish as their magic was sent to empower Santa Claus. Only by Timmy convincing children all over the world to write letters to Santa and have him end the neverending Christmas is the wish finally broken.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In the episode "Hearthbreakers", Applejack, along with her family, visits Pinkie Pie's home in Hearths Warming Day. Noticing that Pinkie's family tradition differs from Applejack, to the point that it was literally dull as rocks, she vamps up the place using her traditions to enlighten the Hearths Warming spirit. It backfires spectacularly when the Pie family landmark, a giant egg-shaped boulder, falls off the edge of a cliff and gets stuck at the bottom of a quarry.
  • The Simpsons: In "Tis The Fifteenth Season", Homer decides to change his ways and become the nicest person in town. When he gets told there's too much commercialism in Christmas and that everyone is better off without presents (by Lisa), Homer decides to to the "ultimate good deed" by stealing Christmas. Needless to say, this doesn't work.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants: One Christmas special has SpongeBob learn about Christmas from Sandy, and proceeds to get the entire town excited about Santa, mostly succeeding. For everyone except Squidward, who of course only dislikes Christmas more for SpongeBob liking it.
  • In Winnie the Pooh and Christmas Too: Christopher Robin writes to Santa, saying what he and his friends would like for Christmas. When Pooh realizes that the letter got sent to the wrong place, he decides to make the presents his friends asked for, then dress up as Santa to deliver them. Unfortunately, the hastily made presents fall apart, and his friends decide to go after the fake Santa, not realizing it's Pooh.

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