Last night, Bee and I went over to Sister No-Mo's and the EcoFellow's for dinner. Sis is home for the semester from the "The U", as they say in Utah (as opposed to "The Why") and we were quite excited to see her. Of course, the food was very tasty and hearty, as always. And the orange-essence flan was lovely!Just before we left the house to head down to their place, Sister No-Mo called and asked if we had a copy of the original, Boris Karloff-narrated version of Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas. (Of course we do, silly goose!) So, we packed that up and off we went.
After dinner, we settled in with our respective flans and a cup of tea each, popped the DVD in the player, and off we went watching the Grinch go from cold and callous to growing his heart three sizes bigger and learning the meaning of Christmas. (By the way--has anyone ever noticed at the end how the roast beast doesn't get smaller as he slices and doles it out? How come I can never get my roast beast to yield that way?)
After enjoying that little stroll down memory lane, we popped Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer in the player. You know this one, right? The one with the claymation type animation before there was claymation. The one with Burl Ives singing the title song, as well as Holly, Jolly Christmas? The one with the elf who wants to be a dentist, the doll that is depressed, the Abominable Snow Man, Yukon Cornelius, Clarice the doe with eyes on Rudolph, cranky-pants Santa, domineering Mrs. Santa, and females of every species who need to be protected by males? Yeah, that one!
As a kid, I missed all the subtle political messages, as well as the outright misogyny that just oozes from this Christmas classic. Needless to say, we had less nostalgia with this one and more commentary than we did with the Grinch. In the end, we concluded it was awful. Simply awful.
Still, Christmas isn't Christmas without watching those shows we all loved as kids, right?
Illustration copyright: Who knows? I found it on Wide Open West via Google Images.
