The Grinch's plan is simple. He figures that if he takes away all the Christmas "stuff" the Whos won't be able to celebrate Christmas. But the Grinch is wrong. He realizes this as they still celebrate; even after he stole all of their Christmas stuff.
To quote from How the Grinch Stole Christmas, “Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store? What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more?”
And of course, Christmas does mean more. Christmas means hope. It means that God wasn’t finished with the world then, and God isn’t finished with it now. We are loved so much that God has done something amazing to save us and to show us the way.
Rudolph expounds this thought. The entire plot of Rudolph centers around misfits. The central misfits are Rudolph and the elf Hermey. Rudolph obviously has some kind of unnatural genetic mutation with his red nose. Because of this, Rudolph is shunned, mocked, and excluded from the reindeer games. Hermey wants to be a dentist, and just doesn’t fit in with elf singing and building toys.
The red-nosed reindeer and the elf dentist and the whole kingdom of misfit toys all help us remember that being different shouldn’t mean being excluded. Every one of us is special to God. Even if on the outside we’re as unspectacular as Charlie Brown’s sad little Christmas tree, we are still loved by God. Our differences don’t make us less than others; in fact our differences are often no more than diverse gifts from God to be treasured and used in the service of all.
Jesus helped everyone to understand that it’s not enough just to love those who love us back, or to accept only the people who look and act like us. We are to do as He did, reaching out to the people others might consider untouchable, unlovable, and/or unacceptable. God loves us, all of us, and God wants us to love even the least of these.
So, summarizing all of this, we can come to understand that Christmas is more than about things, and something about Christmas means even misfits have a place, a community, and a home. Or, rephrased, Christmas means that there are no more misfits.
Jesus comes into the world to reach out to all who need Him. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, He comes, “to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Isaiah 61:1 NIV)
His coming changes the world for He can touch the hearts of those who have forgotten how to love God and their fellow humans. A person may be an old Scrooge, or the nastiest Grinch imaginable, but even in these extreme cases the miracle of Christmas still has the power to touch people and to change hearts.
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