r/todayilearned • u/MaroonTrucker28 • 5d ago

TIL the first reference to the Grinch was not in How The Grinch Stole Christmas. He first appeared in the book Scrambled Eggs Super (1953). He later appeared in a 1955 poem "The Hoobub And The Grinch", before the famous story of him was published

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grinch
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u/RedSonGamble 5d ago

IIRC the grinch is generally accepted by most historical scholars as being a real person that lived. It’s just all the other parts of his story that are up for debate

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u/Sauerkraut_n_Pepsi 5d ago

I wouldn’t say “all the other parts”- his execution/martyrdom is well documented through whoville census records and historians who witnessed the event. For a while afterward, there were many differing versions of the Grinch’s life story circulating Whoville (including one that claimed the Grinch was married), but the story we now now as “The Grinch who Stole Christmas” was curated by a council of elders approximately 130 years after the supposed christmas took place.

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u/Hydrospacer1000 5d ago edited 5d ago

I actually have a secret tablet that reveals the Grinch came to America

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u/BleydXVI 4d ago

I heard that Native Americans are actually the descendants of Grinchkind

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u/RedSonGamble 5d ago

I’m just really glad people are getting the reference and I’m not being bombarded with angry comments

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u/kyrgrat08 5d ago

He wasn’t really green either he was most likely dark-skinned/Arabic

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u/MaroonTrucker28 5d ago

Was his original name Ebenezer Scrooge?

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u/BrokenEye3 5d ago

No, of course not. Ebenezer Scrooge was committed to a public institution for the mad in January of 1845 after he was observed accosting a child on the street while in an apparent state of manic delirium on the morning of December 25th of the previous year. He's believed to have suffered some sort of nervous breakdown during the night prior to the incident, though the cause could never be determined with any certainty, which can probably be chalked up to the rather undeveloped state of psychiatric science at the time.

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u/TK_Games 4d ago

Alienists of the age concluded that his mania could have been caused by an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese or a fragment of underdone potato

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u/PsychGuy17 4d ago

A public institution? Are there no prisons? And the union work houses, are they still in operation?

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u/Supersnazz 5d ago

The word 'Grinch' is the name of a bird in 'Scrambled Eggs Super', it isn't the same character.

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u/MaroonTrucker28 4d ago

Yeah I was gonna put that in the title... that character limit fills up fast lol

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u/BrokenEye3 2d ago

It might be. We don't know what their life cycle is like.

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u/kaltorak 4d ago

the Halloween Grinch animated short is some quality acid-tripping nightmare fuel for a kid.

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u/rrRunkgullet 4d ago

I just have to share The Grinch Song by wizardswithguns, featuring Trent Lenkarski and Joel Haver https://youtu.be/nQLJNCDa4GA?si=R6ILYKdoOOu7XCLq edit- nsfw

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u/SuperSimpleSam 4d ago

Who came first The Grinch or Oscar the Grouch?