The Grinch

Pictured: A three decker sauerkraut and toadstool sandwich with arsenic sauce.

"Every Who down in Who-ville
Liked Christmas a lot...
But the Grinch,
Who lived just North of Who-ville,
Did NOT!"

— Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

There would appear to be no shortage of things to like about Christmas: presents, family, at the very least a little time off from work or school. Who could possibly have any objections toward this most hallowed of holidays?

The Grinch, that's who. This character flat-out hates Christmas, and they'll keep on kicking Christmas-themed dogs until everyone knows it. Usually, when it's revealed exactly what this person has against Christmas, it will turn out to be either over something completely petty (like having never gotten a gift they wanted) or something downright tragic (such as losing their parents on Christmas).

Though occasionally Truth in Television, the Grinch is primarily found in Christmas-themed movies, specials, and episodes, especially the innumerable retellings of A Christmas Carol. The character's role in the story may be that of a protagonist or antagonist, but in any case you can be sure they will change their ways (after The Power of Friendship throws out An Aesop that teaches them the True Meaning of Christmas) before the closing credits roll.

In a more general sense, the Grinch is any character who is utterly disgusted with something almost everyone else enjoys, and whose alienation drives them to be so completely unhappy that they finally decide to spread the misery around.

Comparable to (and frequently overlaps with) the Hollywood Atheist, in that the Grinch's hatred of Christmas will usually be due to some Dark and Troubled Past, their feelings about the holiday will make them grumpy and unpleasant, and they will inevitably change their ways by the end.

Real Life versions will often be fond of Anti-Christmas Songs. See also Crappy Holidays, for works that more or less take the Grinch's viewpoint. If the Grinch follows his namesake to its Whole-Plot Reference conclusion and actually steals the holiday, you have How the Character Stole Christmas.

See also The Scrooge, another character who is usually a Christmas hater, but tends to just ignore the holiday rather than actively try and ruin it for everyone else. Compare Fun-Hating Villain and Evil Cannot Stand Cuteness. Contrast with The Anti-Grinch, who loves Christmas, but ends up nearly destroying it (the Grinch's core goal), albeit unintentionally.

For the animated feature film adaptation of the Trope Namer, see The Grinch (2018).

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Examples

Anime and Manga

• The main character in Itsudatte My Santa! hates Christmas due to his tragic childhood, as well as being born on December 24th and named Santa.
• In the anime-only Christmas episode of Mamotte Shugogetten, Shao becomes an unintentional Grinch by locking Tasuke in his house and (violently) preventing anyone from coming in. We eventually learn that one of Shao's former masters was killed on Christmas because she left their house and was attacked by hungry wolves, so she's afraid the same thing will happen to Tasuke and is trying to keep him safe.
• The aptly-named Mr. Myzer in The Nightmare Before Christmas: Zero's Journey. A cynical elf stuck in Christmas Town, he hates Christmas because he lost his puppy, One, to a tragic sledding accident on Christmas Eve. Aside from a little gingerbread man companion, he seems to have no one else.
  Myzer: Easter...and New Year's Eve...make me scream!
  The only holiday for me is Halloween...
• In Pokémon: The Original Series, Jessie has a serious grudge against Santa Claus for a long time, believing he stole something from her when she was a child (It was a misunderstanding that he is eventually able to explain; unfortunately, this doesn't stop her and James from trying to rob him).

Comic Books

• Archie Comics: Miss Grundy did the same thing as Charlie Brown's teacher (see below) in December of 2013, assigning The Brothers Karamazov over Christmas break.
• Batman: The Joker takes on the role of the Grinch in The Long Halloween; complete with his own version of the poem.
• Green Lantern: Larfleeze once went on a rampage against Mall Santas and tried to melt the North Pole after he waited all Christmas Eve. After Hal Jordan convinces him that the spirit of Christmas was about giving, Larfleeze decided that he hated the Christmas spirit. What he really wanted was for Santa to give him his family.
• Hitman: The 22nd issue had a Christmas-hating janitor named Bob Smurd as the villain, who falls into a nuclear reactor and ends up becoming a radioactive, murderous Santa Claus.
• Shade, the Changing Man: The 19th issue of the Peter Milligan series took place during Christmas and had Shade deal with an insane man who assumed Shade to be the messiah and attempted to kill him due to hating Christmas and believing the celebrations would end if he murdered enough people in horrible ways.
• Spider-Man: There was a villain called the Black Tarantula who got very angry when his henchman put up a Christmas tree and told him to take it down (then knocked it down before he could) saying that he didn't want it because Christmas was a children's holiday and "there are no children here!" (Of course we later learn there was a deeper meaning to this. The title of Black Tarantula was a tradition passed down from father to son over many centuries, and when his wife found out about his criminal activities and that he intended for their son to inherit the title, she ran away, taking their son with him. The loss of his wife and son caused him inner turmoil that made him lash out at anything that reminded him of it.
• The Unbelievable Gwenpool: In Marvel's Gwenpool Holiday Special, the normally-cheery Kamala Khan has a short story based around this, appropriately titled "Ms. Grinch". She's a Muslim whose culture doesn't celebrate Christmas and she doesn't like feeling left out during the holidays, but gets to vent by punching a robber dressed like Santa.

Fan Works

• Gym Leader Volkner from Sunyshore has shades of this in the first Holiday Special of Pokémon Reset Bloodlines, partly because he feels underappreciated for all the work he does to set up the city for the holidays. However, the second Holiday Special shows that he's grown out of this and seems much happier than the previous year, to the point he even accepts an invitation for dinner with the family of his apprentice Sho.

Films — Animation

• Hanukkah version with Davey from Eight Crazy Nights, it was revealed that his parents was killed on their way to see him in his basketball game.

Films — Live-Action

• Frank from Scrooged, which is just another take on A Christmas Carol.
• Subverted in Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, where Voldar and his minions just end up being arrested.
• In How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000), the Grinch still fits. However, in this version, he's portrayed as somewhat of a sympathetic character, while most of the Whos are depicted as sadly materialistic. In a way, his actions are slightly justified. (And while he learns the true meaning of Christmas at the end, you have to admit, stealing Christmas does a good job teaching the same lesson to the people he stole from.)
• Max Schumaker from A Country Christmas. Complete with redemption by the end.
• "Cancel the kitchen scraps for lepers and orphans, no more merciful beheadings, and CALL OFF CHRISTMAS!"
• Dramatically deconstructed in the BBC mockumentary The Day Britain Stopped. The rail union called on a nationwide strike on 20 December 2003, resulting in all of Britain's motorways being gridlocked to a standstill (from the extra amount of cars), people's lives and the nation's infrastructure severely disrupted, and a severely overworked air traffic control office committing an error that led into a two-plane collision over a residential area of London. And this is not counting the continued disruption (that lasted for at least a week) on the roads/rails as well as people travelling to/from overseas. While we don't really see the union's side of thing, it is quite clear that, intentionally or otherwise, the rail workers' union and their decision to go on strike ruined the nation's whole Christmas season in very horrific ways.
• In the TV movie Santa Hunters, Natasha hates Christmas because she didn't get the right doll from Santa when she was a girl.
• In the 1962 film version of The Manchurian Candidate, as Raymond and Ben are listening to a record of "The Twelve Days of Christmas," Raymond comments "Twelve days of Christmas? One day of Christmas is loathsome enough!"
• As A Dennis the Menace Christmas reveals, Mr. Wilson hates Christmas due to him breaking his back delivering letters to Santa during his career as a postman. He also hates shopping with crowds and Christmas carolers, and Dennis and his friends' misguided attempts to bring him Christmas cheer don't exactly help.^note He gets injured when he shops for Mrs. Wilson, arrested when he is accused of stealing a Christmas tree, gets his stomach pumped from eating one of Dennis' homemade cookies, and has his house set on fire when the lights blow a fuse. When Mr. Wilson gives Dennis a "The Reason You Suck" Speech for all the trouble he's caused him (which includes telling him that Santa Claus isn't real), it takes takes Bob the Angel putting him through Yet Another Christmas Carol to get him to change his ways, because otherwise, Dennis will end up as bitter as him.]
• Violent Night: "Mr. Scrooge", the leader of the mercenary thieves who cause the film's plot, has a hatred of Christmas born out of a childhood incident in which he broke into a neighbor's home to get the hot toy of the year and accidentally killed the neighbor's grandfather. When he discovers that the Badass Santa who is killing his hired help is the Santa Claus, magical powers and all, he becomes even more eager to kill him and destroy Christmas once and for all. He doesn't lives to see it, but he gets pretty damn close.

Literature

• Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol is the Trope Codifier, as well as the namer for another trope.
• The Grinch in How the Grinch Stole Christmas! is the Trope Namer. He learns the True Meaning of Christmas when his heart suddenly grows three sizes.
• The White Witch from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe who plunges Narnia into an eternal winter where it is 'always Winter, but never Christmas'. The arrival of Christmas is one of the first signs that her power is faltering.
• A tie-in storybook based on Pixar’s Cars called "Mater Saves Christmas" has Chick Hicks play the Grinch character (he's even painted green!).
• The first story in the anthology Christmas Spirit deals with a fairly nice guy who hates Christmas because he gets overloaded with it through his job.
• John Grisham's Skipping Christmas (later adapted to film as Christmas with the Kranks) involves a married couple who decide not to decorate or otherwise celebrate the holiday one year, to the great consternation of their neighbors.
• Hershel And The Hanukkah Goblins has a Jewish version, where the titular goblins ruin Hanukkah for everyone in the town, and Hershel agrees to defeat them and bring back Hanukkah.

Live Action TV

• The first Christmas special made by Jim Henson, The Great Santa Claus Switch, has Cosmo Scam, a sorcerer who kidnaps Santa to take his place and steal from every home around the world.
• Sesame Street: Oscar the Grouch dislikes the holiday so much, he's willing to sing about how he hates it.
• Scrubs: Dr. Cox claims that he hates Christmas. Of course, J.D.'s subsequent Imagine Spot portrays him as the Grinch in full green fuzzy make-up.
  Dr. Cox: I don't like bambastoodles, I loathe dinklewallows, I hate snagtomgoppers, I say, do you follow?
• Kazran Sardick from the Doctor Who 2010 Christmas Episode "A Christmas Carol".
• Sue Sylvester, in the Glee Christmas episode.
• The eponymous character of Monk hated the Christmas season, although he had a very sympathetic reason for doing so, as it was around that time of year that Trudy, his wife and the only person who ever had him see the positives of Christmas, was murdered via Car Bomb, and his early experiences with Christmas were admittedly quite horrible (for instance, in 1964, his mother fell ill, his dad was what he usually was, and Ambrose Monk locked himself in the basement for the whole Christmas season [Monk implies by saying "he was no fool" that Ambrose did this deliberately], and he himself received only one walkie talkie out of a set, which his dad explained that he gave the gift to him because he only ever needed one because he didn't really have any friends).
• Britta, as the resident Hollywood Atheist and Soapbox Sadie on Community, makes a series of rather smug and snide dismissals of the trappings of the festive season, such as Christmas songs, which cause her to come off as a bit of a killjoy. Curiously, due to Characterization Marches On she comes off as a lot more easy-going about the holidays in the season 1 Christmas episode ("Comparative Religion").
• Homicide: Life on the Street: Fitting with his cynical and depressed nature, Munch utterly loathes Christmas and rants at length about how meaningless he believes the holiday is.
• A common characteristic of Power Rangers villains:
  • Lord Zedd complains about Christmas every year, according to Rita, but one year he decides to invade Santa's workshop and impose his ideal Christmas on the world. The heroes naturally show up to confront the villains, but they're at a clear disadvantage here, as the North Pole has a "unique polarity" that leaves them unable to morph. (Fortunately, the bad guys have the same disadvantage, and are defeated via a snowball fight.)
  • King Mondo is even worse. In the Power Rangers Zeo Christmas episode, he robs the presents from Angel Grove to please his Spoiled Brat of a son, and imposes a Hate Plague upon the heroes to make them argue.
  • In Dino Charge, Poisandra has a personal grudge against Santa, stealing his computer after being denied presents. (Santa, it seems, keeps his "naughty/nice list" on it, and never made a backup, meaning he'd have to cancel Christmas if he can't get it back.)
• Count Dregon, the Big Bad of Masked Rider. One of his evil plans is an attempt to set an ambush for Santa Claus. He is confirmed as this trope when the plan fails, when he says outright that he "hates Christmas".
• A Lois & Clark Christmas episode has Lois as one of these.
• Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory hates Christmas, claiming it's a knockoff of the pagan celebration of Saturnalia, bemoaning being forced to participate by his zealously religious mother as a child, etc., all to the annoyance of his roommate who just wants some Christmas cheer because he was forced to write papers by his family on Christmas. It all comes to a head during a Christmas themed game of Dungeons & Dragons where Sheldon leaves Santa (whom they were supposed to be saving) to die, ruining the game and Christmas spirit for all involved, and declares that the real reason he hates Christmas is that Santa never granted him his wish of bringing his "Pop-Pop" (the only family member that encouraged his interest in science) back as a kid.
• Hutch from Starsky & Hutch spends the Christmas Episode complaining about the "phony wave of euphoric sentimentalism orchestrated by the clanging of cash registers."
• Frank in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia apparently made a habit of ruining Christmas for his kids, usually through cruel pranks (i.e. giving them very large presents that turned out to contain empty boxes, or buying the gifts they wanted for himself and then ruining them), that he continued well into their adulthood. Ostensibly, this was to teach them a lesson about hard work, but it's pretty clearly just him being a dick. He has a change of heart later in the episode... because he realizes if he keeps this up, they'll get together and beat him to death.
• Dash & Lily: Dash is a proud Christmas hater. He detests all the fake cheer and celebration.
• In Kamen Rider Drive: Shinnosuke doesn't like Christmas all that much. He explains that his birthday is on Christmas Eve, so he always felt shortchanged when his loved ones combined the two into a single celebration every year.
• The Family Ties episode "A Keaton Christmas Carol" opens with Alex ranting about the phoniness of Christmas, the closed businesses, and the "white glop" falling from the sky, refusing to be in the family Christmas photo, and yelling at carolers to get off the lawn.

Music

• See Anti-Christmas Song for an entire genre expressing this viewpoint.

Professional Wrestling

• The Million Dollar Man Ted Dibiase wasn't too fond of Christmas and was especially disparaging of children and Santa Clause, unleashing his own personal bad Santa (Xanta Clause) on Savio Vega for having the gall to make kids happy.
• Sienna Duvall hates Christmas, the trees, the singing, the presents, all of it!
• In 2013, Jimi Mayhem (Shogun of Harlem) declared Christmas canceled, on account he didn't see the point of it.

Video Games

• In Guild Wars Wintersday celebrations, Grenth and his followers work to spoil the holiday for everyone else. There are a pair of Shout Outs to the Trope Namer: Grenth has minions called Grentches, and one Dwayna-supporting quest is called "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grenth."
• "Operation Claws", a non-canon scenario for StarCraft, is about the evil Zergrinch holding Santa Claws hostage on Planet Christmas because he never brings presents to the zerg.
• The protagonists and supporting characters of Garden Gnome Carnage and Hyper Princess Pitch hate Christmas. For the latter game it's explained that none of them got any presents as kids/kits, and Pitch herself is heavily implied to have spent all her life on the "naughty" list.
• In DC Universe Online, Larfleeze stole a bunch of Christmas presents, which Hal Jordan tasks the players with recovering. Of course, it’s likely Larfleeze doesn’t care about Christmas itself- the guy is powered by greed, so taking things is just human nature for him.
• Many, many Frostval villains in Artix Entertainment games are this.
• The Boss in Saints Row IV wasn't particularly fond of the holiday, much to the chagrin of Shaundi and her future self, who both compared him/her to the trope namer (though the Boss doesn't even know what a Grinch is). (S)he eventually grew to love it by the end of How the Saints Save Christmas.
• World of Warcraft has two that are problems during Winter's Veil:
  • The Abominable Greench not only steals presents during Winter's Veil, he kidnaps Metzen the Reindeer, and unlike the guy he's a parody of, is very, very dangerous. (As in, he's a Raid Boss, and should not be confronted alone. However, actually fighting him is not required to complete the daily quest.)
  • Far more malicious is Grumpas, who can only be fought by players who can access the Broken Isles. Legends state that he kidnaps naughty children and creates his minions using their tears. Of course, he's no legend, and makes his lair in the frozen wasteland of Frostfire Ridge, a dangerous arctic region with volcanic activity.
• Kingdom Hearts II gives us a trip to Christmas Town. This is the only Disney world in which Maleficent takes personal action save for her homeworld in Enchanted Dominion. For context, this game also features the seas of cursed pirates, and a literal underworld where the souls of Final Fantasy characters seem to end up, and the Mistress of All Evil only personally gets involved to wreck Christmas.

Web Animation

• In A Wily Show Hokey Christmas Special, Dr. Wily hates Christmas because his mother pranked him with fake gifts containing either nothing or an insulting note during his childhood. Apparently he didn't program his Robot Masters with the same disdain, as several of them decide to create a pleasant holiday experience to make up for those years. The short also references and parodies the Trope Namer's story by having Wily witness the people gathering and singing after he razed the town and promptly blowing them to Kingdom Come after the narrator states that the sight caused Wily's heart to become darker.
• In RWBY Chibi Roman Torchwick plays this role in "Nondescript Holiday Spectacular", stealing everyone's holiday spirit and ending up having his heart grow three sizes... and giving him a heart attack in the process.

Webcomics

• In Goblin Hollow, as told by Ben Bruin's buddy Fred, about a Wiccan employee, who even used the Pointy-Haired Boss as leverage, to stop the store and the employees that work there from celebrating Christmas because it offended her.
  Roz Poodle: She wouldn't DARE ban my handcrafted singing Santa cookie jar!
  Ben Bruin: Are you kidding? She'd ban snow if it didn't fall out of the sky on a regular basis.
• Third Character from Jayden and Crusader hates Christmas. He starts off by attacking Christmas carollers and it only gets worse.

Web Original

• SCP-1225 ("The Worst Christmas"). SCP-1225 is a spindle shaped glass ornament. When hung on a tree or similar plant, it causes everything that's within 4 meters of it and inside a container to suffer from Rapid Aging. In other words, it's a Christmas ornament specifically designed to spoil people's Christmases by destroying their presents. The Grinch who stole Christmas would be proud of whoever created this.
• Ghost does not like Christmas at all, but in typical Ghost fashion, still rages when people compare him to the actual Grinch.
• The Nostalgia Chick's already Black Comedy gets pitch-dark over Christmas, and giving a lottery ticket to Todd only makes her realize that the true meaning of the holiday is rampant materialism. It's a stark contrast compared to her Distaff Counterpart. Bonus points for her also being The Scrooge.
• Turles serves as this in Dragon Ball Z Abridged's version of the Tree of Might movie (set as a Christmas special). He hates Christmas because Santa never visited Planet Vegeta (the closest they got was Freeza Day, A.K.A. the day Freeza blew up the planet) and uses the tree to sap the "Joy" out of Earth, and recruits "Mistfit Minions" who all have a reason why they're on Santa's Naughty List. He even expresses his hatred when Gohan runs into him:
  Turles:

  I hate gingerbread houses! I hate presents and toys.

  I hate reindeer and all of the good girls and boys.

  I hate the Whos down in Whoville—and all of their songs.

  I hate their whumpets and blumpets and goobag-for-brawns.

  I hate carols and sleigh rides and "falalalalas".

  But above all things else...

  I hate Santa Claus!
  Gohan: DON'T TALK SH*T ABOUT SANTA!!!
  • It later turns out that Santa actually did try to visit the Saiyans, but they kept attacking his sleigh.
  • Goku thinks that the villains in Lord Slug Abridged are this, but in reality they've never heard of the holiday and think he means Freeza Day. The movie isn't even set around the holidays; it's July and the only reason there's snow everywhere is because Slug blocked out the sun.
• Tom. Dear GOD Tom. Him being raised a Jehovah's Witness can make this trope seem justified, but it gets to the point where he actively seeks to destroy a city thanks to his loathing of Christmas. It takes Edd, Matt, Santa and Zanta Claws to stop him to shooting Santa's hijacked sled down with a giant robot.
• Linkara brings up how prevalent this sort of character is during his review of Superman's Christmas Adventure (which had its own example of this trope), declaring their efforts to ruin the holidays to be the true War on Christmas, and wondering if they have their own Legion of Doom.
  • He also reviews Star Trek: The Next Generation #2 in rhyme precisely because the alien villains resemble the actual Grinch.
• In one Christmas themed episode of commodoreHUSTLE, the team get it into their heads that Graham hates Christmas, and a couple even dress up as ghosts to try and bring about Yet Another Christmas Carol. In a subversion, Graham actually loves Christmas, it's just that the actual holiday is over two weeks away, and he's tired of people obsessing over it when they have stuff to do in the meantime. Nobody listens.
• Jontron is so distressed by Zoo Race that he becomes this, actually calling up the government to cancel Christmas:
  Hello, U.S. Government? Yeah I'm calling in because I'd like to cancel Christmas. Yeah, exactly, just like The Grinch! Yes, because the human race doesn't deserve a break; we got at least 10, 20 years before we're gonna fix this shit! So does this cancel Christmas all around the world, or do I gotta call each country individually? Yeah, okay, I'll hold.

Western Animation

• The adaptation of How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, obviously.
• Olive, the Other Reindeer: The Postman hates Christmas, because he just sees the holiday season as something that creates more work for him. He even gets a Villain Song about how he's glad about the prospect of Christmas being cancelled.
• The Miser Brothers in The Year Without a Santa Claus have this attitude in the sequel A Miser Brothers Christmas, where they are shown to not be fond of Christmas because they never got any presents from Santa Claus. They get better after they learn that the reason why they never got anything for Christmas was because they were on the naughty list for their Sibling Rivalry.
• In Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town (which features Santa Claus as a young man, then called Kris Kringle) the villain is the grouchy mayor of Sombertown, Burgermeister Meisterburger. He outlaws toys after he breaks his foot by tripping on one, and Kris later becomes an outlaw for trying to give them as gifts. Kris' solution to this is unusual for children's cartoons: nonviolent protest (growing a beard and changing his name to Santa Claus helps too). And it works. It is implied that Meisterburger's family eventually died out, and his silly ideas are rejected, Santa being revered as a hero.
• The '90s cartoon X-Men: The Animated Series had a Christmas Episode where Wolverine took on this role.
• Bowser Koopa, Mario's nemesis, is this kind of character in The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! Christmas Episode. He doesn't reform at the end, though oddly in the later Super Mario World Christmas episode, he doesn't seem to hate the holiday as much (although he does rip off the Trope Namer).
• Dr. Doofenshmirtz in Phineas and Ferb Christmas Vacation is a subversion. He admits (via musical number) that he really doesn't hate Christmas; despite having a Freudian Excuse for practically everything, Doofenshmirtz is at worst, apathetic about Christmas and in fact wishes he did have a good reason to try and ruin Christmas. He only built a device to destroy it because he received the kit for it in the mail. But by the end of the special he does come to hate Christmas, because of carolers pestering him for figgy pudding (which he was surprised to find he actually had) and Perry defeating him again... until he gets a gift from Santa Claus in the end. He's then seen celebrating Christmas again and exchanging gifts with Perry the Platypus.
• Bushroot in the Darkwing Duck Christmas episode. His motivation for being a Grinch, though, is that he has great difficulty doing his Christmas shopping and swears to make everyone else feel his pain.
• Herman the Hermit and Snively in Yogi's First Christmas.
• Charlie Brown's teacher definitely qualifies for making him read War and Peace during Christmas vacation in Happy New Year, Charlie Brown.
  • This was actually an exaggerated version of a storyline that ran in the comic strip, where his teacher assigned Gulliver's Travels during Christmas break (not as long, but still way too advanced for grade school) and Charlie Brown didn't help matters by procrastinating.
• Cousin Mel from Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer is a nasty one, attempting to bump grandma off and frame Santa for it, simply to gain ownership of Grandma's store. Not to mention her Amoral Attorney of a lawyer, I.M. Slime.
• The Simpsons:
  • Homer Simpson steals gifts in "'Tis the Fiftheenth Season", accompanied by a variation of the Grinch song. The twist is that Homer believes he's doing a good thing by getting rid of excess materialism (he Took a Level in Kindness after watching A Christmas Carol all night and Lisa ended up giving him the idea when wondering how else to help people) which would allow people to have a more emotionally meaningful holiday. Not surprisingly, it just pisses people off.
  • The Simpsons family also attempt to steal some Funzos before Christmas Day. Subverted in that they actually have a very good reason for doing so, as apparently, the toy company that created Funzo also programmed it to destroy any and all toys that are not part of its own line, meaning allowing them to survive would have made Christmas worse.
  • In one episode, Mr. Burns is also stated to have stolen Christmas in 1986. In one future episode, a character again alludes to Mr. Burns having stolen Christmas, this time apparently permanently.
  • Another episode has Skinner showing kids at the school his favourite movie about "a Grinchy little character who tries to steal Christmas". To the surprise of the kids, it turns out to not be the Grinch, but instead an interminably long and terrible movie featuring "the Christmas hobgoblins" as antagonists who try to ruin Christmas.
• Mr. Plotz is like this in an Animaniacs Christmas Episode that's a parody of A Christmas Carol (him taking the role as Scrooge).
• The Real Ghostbusters:
  • Prior to the Ghostbusters' accidental Time Travel detour where they meet Scrooge and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future, Peter Venkman was not a fan of Christmas, due to his dad never being around for it when he was a kid.
  • In a rare non-Christmas example, the episode "The Halloween" features a character who hates Halloween.
• Must be common for ghost hunters — turns out Danny Phantom is also a Grinch. Growing up with two erratic parents who spend their holidays too busy arguing about Santa's existence gave him a deep hatred of Christmas and probably the only child negligence story involving possessed turkey and the one time a dog peed in his face when he was a baby. Unfortunately, he takes his aggression on the wrong guy and is forced to learn the real meaning of the holidays.
• Shrek starts out as one of these in Shrek the Halls.
• The Beast in Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas, due to Christmas being the day he and the castle was cursed by the enchantress.
• Eddy from Ed, Edd n Eddy hates Christmas because all he ever gets is clothes.
• Princess Morbucks in The Powerpuff Girls Christmas episode.
• Hank may not truly fit this role in King of the Hill, but in one episode he says "Santa Claus is for babies" causing Bill to tell him "Well you're a mean one, Mr. Grinch."
• Grouchy Smurf in The Smurfs: A Christmas Carol starts off as this because all he wanted was a hang glider for a Christmas present and all he ever got was a Smurf hat. The final straw came when he was fooled into thinking he was finally getting a hang glider when it turned out to be one of Jokey's "surprises".
• Joe Swanson from Family Guy was a bit of a Grinch since it was during the Christmas season that he was paralyzed. He eventually got over it, mostly. Ironically the one who caused his injury was in fact, the Trope Namer, who was stealing toys from the orphanage. Though in "Joe's Revenge", he admits the story was all just a cover-up.
• South Park: Sheila Broflovski in "Mr. Hankey the Christmas Poo" and Saddam Hussein in "It's Christmas in Canada".
• Professor Membrane of Invader Zim swore eternal revenge on Santa Claus after once getting socks for Christmas instead of the uranium he asked for. He doesn't seem to have a problem with the holiday in general, but he does keep a fully stocked armoury with Santa's name on it.
• Repeatedly subverted in Sheep in the Big City, where General Specific's comments sound like they're expressing a hatred for Christmas, but actually aren't in-context. For instance, he keeps saying "humbug", but is actually being bothered by a bug that is humming. When he orders someone to make "these idiot" stop celebrating happily, he specifically meant to get rid of these idiots (some random, half-naked men who had wandered into the base) and didn't care when his soldiers started celebrating.
• Batman is presented as such both in Justice League and Batman: The Brave and the Bold. In the latter, the explanation given is that his parents were killed on Christmas and he was mean to them for not receiving the gift he wanted hours earlier, but he learns to love Christmas at the end of the episode.
• Gadget Boy's Adventures in History had a Christmas Episode where Spydra despised Christmas so much that she tried to erase the traditions of the holiday from history to eliminate Christmas entirely.
• Oh Yeah! Cartoons featured a Super Santa short called "Naughty" where the villain was Elmer Scrooge, a descendant of Ebenezer Scrooge who planned to ruin Christmas by using a gas to make all the children naughty, having grown to hate Christmas because Santa gave him coal all the time.
• Wacky Races (2017) establishes that Dick Dastardly despises Christmas in the episode "It's a Wacky Life", to the point that the episode ends with him smashing the other racers' presents and taking a flamethrower to the Christmas tree. Peter Perfect comments that Dastardly does this every year.
• Subverted in DuckTales (2017): Scrooge McDuck is seems to grumbly angrily about Christmas, but later reveals to Dewey that it's all an act he puts on so he has a day to himself to cut loose, hang out with the Ghosts of Christmas, and crash Christmas parties throughout history. He realizes that Christmas is better with family, though. He does genuinely hate Santa Claus though, which is later revealed to be because they used to be business partners until Santa started giving away presents instead of selling coal on Christmas Eve.
  "That churlish chimney chaser is not to be trusted!"
• Starlight Glimmer in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic's take on A Christmas Carol starts out as The Scrooge, but actively turns into this mid-episode when she plots to erase Hearthswarming Eve for good. Unfortunately, celebrating the holiday also keeps the destructive Windigos at bay and in doing so she nearly destroys the whole world. Again. The events of the episode were Twilight's Imagine Spot while she was reading an in-universe fairy tale to Starlight.
• Quillgin from Regular Show's Christmas special is perhaps one of the darkest and most evil examples of this trope. He was once an elf who worked for Santa, who came up with an idea for a gift, which was an empty box that could give to anyone who opens it whatever they want. However, after it proved too dangerous since it used black magic that brought out the worst in people, Quillgin sought revenge against Santa for ruining his life's work, deciding to do so by retrieving the box so he can use it to destroy Christmas by spawning dynamite on every house in the world so he can kill everyone who celebrates Christmas. Unlike most examples, he's considered irredeemable and dies at the end of the special.
• Rocko's Modern Life: In "Rocko's Modern Christmas", Mr. Bighead hates Christmas, and Mrs. Bighead wishes that he could try and enjoy it for once instead of complaining about it. Mr. Bighead hates elves even more than Christmas, and ruins Rocko's Christmas party by spreading rumors about the elves who moved in across the street from him. His dislike of Christmas is because he never got invited to a Christmas party (being the Nice Guy that he is, Rocko invites him to his, but the invitation got lost in the mail).
• Work It Out Wombats!: A rare non-Christmas example. In "Summerweenie Halloweenie," Mr. E reveals that he hates Halloween, but he later goes trick-or-treating with the wombats. The truth is that he doesn't hate Halloween, he just doesn't know it. Later on, he declares that he loves Halloween.

Real Life

• The historical Puritans, in both Cromwellian Britain and colonial America, not only refused to celebrate Christmas but actually made it punishable by law to do so (both for theological reasons — they saw the holiday as unbiblical and paganistic — and because they strongly disapproved of all the feasting, drinking, dancing, carousing, begging, canoodling, and other hedonistic and disorderly behavior that was generally associated with the holiday).
• The Communist Chinese government views Christmas as a pro-Western/religious holiday and tries to suppress it accordingly.
• Christmas is likewise suppressed in some majority-Muslim countries. For example, the Somali government outright outlawed Christmas (and New Year's) celebrations in 2015, claiming the holidays had "nothing to do with Islam", although just how they planned to enforce this edict was unclear. (Almost every citizen of Somalia itself is Muslim, but there are thousands of non-Muslim African Union peacekeepers in residence.)
• It's a popular prank for parents to have an uncle or family friend dress up as the Grinch and steal their young kids' Christmas presents in front of them or appear to want to.

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