In a World of Unnecessary Sequels, the Recently Announced Official Follow-Up to How the Grinch Stole Christmas Stands Out For Being Particularly Pointless

In a wildly unsurprising development, Random House announced that on September 5th it will be releasing an official sequel to Dr. Seuss’ all-time holiday classic How the Grinch Stole Christmas entitled How the Grinch Lost Christmas. 

The only real surprise is that it took this long to churn out an official follow-up to a book that has sold ten million copies and been adapted lucratively for television and film. 

The sequel nobody asked for takes place the year after the Grinch stole Christmas. The reformed, Christmas-loving Grinch is now out to prove his Yuletide mastery by building a large, gaudy Christmas tree he’s convinced will win him Who-ville’s Christmas Crown. When the Grinch is disappointed he reverts back to his grinchy ways before re-learning that Christmas isn’t about materialism or winning. 

The press release for How the Grinch Lost Christmas boasts disingenuously, “readers will finally get to know how the Grinch spent Christmas one year after the events of his big heist and will see if he has truly embraced the spirit of Christmas.” 

What this opportunistic sequel willfully ignores is that there is a natural, organic timeframe and structure for classic Christmas stories. That natural timeframe is of course Christmas, or, if you’re feeling generous, the time leading up to a Christmas. 

Focussing on A Christmas lends these stories an inherent urgency. Christmas needs to be saved and lessons need to be learned and it all has to happen during Christmas and Christmas Eve. Ebenezer Scrooge has to wake up Christmas morning and realize that he’s wasted his life doggedly chasing every last penny rather than embracing humanity. Scrooge’s spiritual growth can’t occur over a series of Christmases. Nobody cares what happens the Christmas after the kerfuffle with the ghosts, just what happened that magical night. 

There’s a damned good reason classic Christmas stories like The Christmas Carol, It’s a Wonderful Life andThe Nightmare Before Christmas don’t have sequels. 

“Yes, but what happens NEXT Christmas?” is a door, consequently, that should not be opened and exists exclusively for the sake of eking out even more money from one of the great cash cows of children’s literature. That is one of the great ironies of the intense monetization and exploitation of Dr. Suess’ Christmas classic. It’s a timeless and beloved fable about the evils of materialism, consumerism and mindless consumption that has been crassly exploited for material gain over and over again. 

From the uniquely unpromising plot summary, it looks like How the Grinch Lost Christmas! will follow in the footsteps of other wildly unnecessary sequels and cynically un-do all of the moral and spiritual grow that occured the first time around for the sake of repeating a character arc and having a protagonist RE-learn the meaning of Christmas. 

I don’t want to see the Grinch learn that Christmas is about love and giving and compassion all over again. That feels both maddeningly redundant and disrespectful to the original. 

If nothing else, How the Grinch Lost Christmas! refutes the patently absurd idea that Dr. Seuss and his most beloved creations have become the highest-profile victims of Cancel Culture when his estate allowed a few obscure, poor-selling books in his catalog to mercifully go out of print because they contain racist ideas and imagery. 

Dr. Seuss most assuredly has NOT been cancelled. The Cat in the Hat has not been cancelled. And the Grinch has not been cancelled either. He is experiencing the opposite of cancellation, in fact. 

Instead of being censored or banned he’s being resurrected for the sake of scoring some more of that sweet, sweet, posthumous book money. This Christmas season there will be more Grinch books in circulation than ever before but that’s not necessarily necessary or good. 

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