The Grench, Revisited

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I’m going to take the easy way out today, since–provided they are not flooded out–we’ll have a house-ful of Goose Creekers down the valley for Roast Beast tonight. I have a Brittanica-sized honey-do list today.

So do this: go to the link below and either READ or LISTEN TO how the Grench was exonerated for alledgedly stealing Christmas from WhoVille. (Originally posted Dec 2011.)

It begins thusly:

Granted, his methods were nefarious the year he stole Christmas. But his tiny heart secretly was–and is–in the right place. He relented in the end, and returned the Roast Beast, the pandookas and tartookas. He let Cindy Lou Who have her Christmas in Whoville, after all.

It just might be that his intention was not to steal Christmas to do away with all the fliffer bloofs and wuzzle wuzz, but to make the misguided Whos understand it was not about things, after all.

And what you may not know is that His Despicable Greenness is only one in a vast army of seasonally-afflicted beings, pink and brown, great and small—a state of mind and heart that reaches back many generations, continuing right up to our day. The resisters’ Giftmas discomfort is strong and their numbers are growing.

Not because their hearts are two sizes too small do they refuse to become Santa’s little robotic shoppers. Composed of Christians and unchurched alike, this throng longs for a special time in December that is not as unnatural as an aluminum tree sprayed with toxic snow. They look for ways, short of another Winter Heist, to keep the good and real of it, and cast off the counterfeit and increasingly oppressive expectations of this particular Winter Tsunami of Stuff and Fluff.

Click link to listen or read the rest of the story!

Headlines: Christmas Stolen. The Grinch Exonerated!

 

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fred
fred

Fred First holds masters degrees in Vertebrate Zoology and physical therapy, and has been a biology teacher and physical therapist by profession. He moved to southwest Virginia in 1975 and to Floyd County in 1997. He maintains a daily photo-blog, broadcasts essays on the Roanoke NPR station, and contributes regular columns for the Floyd Press and Roanoke's Star Sentinel. His two non-fiction books, Slow Road Home and his recent What We Hold in Our Hands, celebrate the riches that we possess in our families and communities, our natural bounty, social capital and Appalachian cultures old and new. He has served on the Jacksonville Center Board of Directors and is newly active in the Sustain Floyd organization. He lives in northeastern Floyd County on the headwaters of the Roanoke River.

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