I’d say How the Grinch Stole Christmas at least tries to be such a story. The story serves as a (compromised) push-back on consumerism, if not as an explicitly anti-capitalist polemic. The 2000 rendition with Jim Carrey as the Grinch has some pretty on-the-nose monologuing from The Grinch concerning The Whos’ avarice and the effects it has on him, the environment, and the culture of Whoville. Also implied in that monologue, though not as on-the-nose, is that their ceremonies of gift exchanging, in addition to incentivizing said avarice, are an insincere substitute for genuine solidarity with and love for one another. Just prior to the monologue, The Mayor is effectively trying to buy a marriage to Martha May with a luxurious car and dazzling diamond, rather than earnestly commit to her as an equal partner. And even earlier in the story, we follow Cindy-Lou Who, who also has her own “Yuletide doubts” about the sincerity of Christmas in Whoville.

However, the story is compromised, in my opinion, and those “Yuletide doubts” disingenuously cast off, by the fact that, at the end, the articles of consumption, the gifts, are all back. Nothing is lost. Everything returns to normal, except now The Grinch has become one of The Whos. The explicitly stated morals of the story – that “Christmas doesn’t come from a store,” and that The Whos don’t need anything more than their families – fall flat if said families only ever fleetingly part with their gifts, before The Grinch returns them. If “Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more,” then the viewer is left wondering just what that “little bit more” is.

Though maybe that, in itself, is something to think about. The Grinch’s valid criticisms are subsumed, or co-opted, by The Whos, when they finally accept The Grinch as a member of the tribe, of their family. And The Grinch, rather than standing by his criticisms, chooses to join the tribe, the family. He falls to revisionism, engaging in the very excesses he previously rejected now that he no longer gets the short end of the stick. He, and the rest of The Whos, go through the motions of re-affirming their bonds of kinship – they sing and dance and hold hands in a circle – but are nevertheless sure to keep their Christmas Feast and all their gifts.

Christmas in Whoville may nominally be “family first” by the time the credits roll, but Whoville sure seems remiss to actually test their convictions by genuinely forgoing their precious consumption in favor of a “family only” Christmas. And would The Grinch have been accepted into the family in the first place had he not recovered all of the presents? Had he instead failed and came back to Whoville empty-handed? Or even intentionally dumped the presents as he originally planned to? That’s a question that I suspect would still keep Cindy Lou Who up at night in the Marxist sequel that lives in my head rent free.

…Yeah. I’ve watched The Grinch entirely too many damn times (the 2000 Carrey version). It’s a comfort movie, I guess.