It takes a lot for sweet-voiced 28-year-old Nick Darnell to transform himself into the most sought-after sourpuss of Christmas.
There are colored contacts and facial prostheses, a protruding belly and at least an hour of make-up. But for the devout Christian and former fun-loving young actor, the real change is psychological.
“People today like to associate themselves with the villain,” the Grinch actor said. “The world is a dark world now.”
Darnell called the chartreuse baddie he portrayed “a modern-day Santa.”
Picture of the holiday of Dr. Seuss’ “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” has been a seasonal favorite since its publication in 1957, ranking among the most popular and profitable of the author’s rhyming picture books.
The story’s shiny, brassy antihero has similarly graced Christmas trees and school library shelves for generations. His horn-like frontal fur and his refusal to mold have led some critics to vaguely label the Grinch as antisemitic, but those concerns have been debunked by years of nostalgia.
Experts say 2025 heralds the Grinch’s rise from Yuletide minor player to Christmas A-lister. Now he’s collecting Kris Kringle in-store programs, social media and social media as well as holiday greetings.
Unlike Santa, who ho-ho-ho-hos his way through the holiday season, Grinches shudder and yell and scream in children’s faces. Compilations of their antics on YouTube and TikTok often amass millions of views.
“I do things that people think,” Darnell said of the role. “I’m not blocked.”
Despite the Grinch’s enthusiasm for fighting consumers, the market for his face has exploded in recent years.
Target is all about “Grinchmas,” while Walmart has “WhoKnewVille.” McDonald’s sells Grinch fries, Starbucks features a “secret menu” frappuccino. Hanna Andersson, a popular reviewer of holiday pajamas, boasts about a dozen different Grinch patterns, compared to three Hanukkah options and one Santa design in two colors.
“I’m uninhibited,” Grinch character Nick Darnell, 28, said of his role.
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
The identity of the Grinch is jealously guarded as the villain defends his place: Dr. Seuss Enterprises owns the rights to the children’s book, Warner Bros. Discovery is a 1966 animated TV special, and Universal Studios’ 2000 live-action film starring Jim Carrey, ranked among the top Christmas movies.
But actors, academics and even working Santas agree: Americans’ acceptance of the Grinch in 2025 goes beyond shopping.
“It’s definitely very popular,” said ‘Santa’ Ed Taylor, the famous Los Angeles Santa behind the Worldwide Santa Claus Network, a boot camp for the art of Christmas cheer. “A little yin and yang. Maybe we need a little of both.”
Costume companies across Los Angeles say they’ve seen an uptick in demand for the Grinch this year. At Etoile Costume & Party Center in Tarzana, almost half of the Christmas costume rentals are now green pirates.
“It’s almost the size of Santa,” said one employee. “Maybe 40% Grinch and the rest Santa.”
Ryan Ortiz, dressed in a Grinch costume, stands next to his 1969 Volkswagen Bus in San Diego on Dec. 21.
(KC Alfred / The San Diego Union-Tribune via Getty Images)
Fans of the hirsute sourpuss want him on the edge of your face – the opposite of Santa’s distant joviality. Santa enforces his rule of justice through lists and surveillance. The Grinch will get in your face and yell at you to shut up.
“[Santa]”It’s supposed to be mysterious and unknown,” said Darnell’s fiancee JadaPaige. “He’s supposed to come at night and you’re not supposed to see him.”
“I grew up obsessing about Santa Claus — I didn’t grow up obsessing about the Grinch,” Darnell said. “I was a kid waiting in the middle of the night, looking out, wondering if Santa was out there. Most kids today don’t have that journey.”
Instead, many Gen Alpha youth look to the Grinch for their views on “corruption or poverty or commercial overabundance,” Darnell said.
“Santa looks like a godly man, while the Grinch is an everyday man,” the actor explained. “The world is very bad and bad. [The Grinch] telling you how it is, rather than telling you everything is going to be okay.”
TikTok has bucked that trend, with the infamous green meanie matching or beating its red rival for the holiday season.
“You have an aura,” Darnell said.
Nick Darnell, who plays the Grinch, said the character he plays is popular because, “He has an aura.”
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
Today’s professional Santas often retire with a belly and some time on their hands. In contrast, the Grinches are likely to be active actors like Darnell, who reverently regard Carrey’s performance as a blueprint for the character’s slapstick antics and macabre reading.
Still, experts say the 2025 Grinch light-up likely owes as much to holiday fatigue and widespread consumer pessimism as the straight-to-video does.
“The Grinch is the flip side of Christmas,” said Oscar Tellez, who owns Magic Dream Costumes and Party Rentals in East Los Angeles and says he’s seen an increase in Grinch requests as holiday rentals have declined.
“Especially with the Latino community, I don’t think they feel the enthusiasm to celebrate,” Tellez said. “They are very worried about what will happen next.”
Pop culture experts agree.
“The economy is in deep trouble, our political climate is up and down, there’s a lot of hate — it’s no wonder we’d want to express that with a monster like the Grinch,” said Michael M. Chemers, director of the Center for Monster Studies at UC Santa Cruz.
“You’ve seen these nativity scenes all over the country that have removed the figures of Jesus and say ‘ICE was there,'” he added. “I think there are a lot of Grinchy feelings in the world right now.”
Chemers and other scholars say that the Grinch’s appearance as a foil to Santa is less a departure than a return to form: the Grinch is a “PG version” of the legendary Krampus, a forked-tongued German goat man who beats and kidnaps naughty children, serving as Father Christmas’s enforcer.
An “organillero,” or traditional street performer, dressed as an anti-Christmas character known as the Grinch performs in a central street in Mexico City on Dec. 9.
(Yuri Cortez/AFP via Getty Images)
“He’s called the Christmas devil,” said Jeff Belanger, author of “The Fright Before Christmas,” a collection of so-called “Yuletide monsters.”
“[Krampus] represents the result of immorality, while St. Nick rewards good behavior,” he said.
Krampus may have evolved from older, pre-Christian gods, just as Christmas took over the solstice and midwinter traditions, the author explained. Christmas for most Americans grew up as a national holiday only after the Civil War, he said, about a decade after Thanksgiving was officially introduced in 1863. It was around this time that Christmas trees became popular in the United States.
“In 1867, Charles Dickens came to Boston and that’s where he read his ‘Christmas Carol’ for the first time in America,” prompting President Ulysses S. Grant to declare Christmas a national holiday, Belanger said. “Of course it was behind that story.”
The spoiled, white-bearded holiday dandy came later, his schmaltzy persona from St. Nicholas between Reconstruction and 1931, when Coca-Cola first introduced its alcoholic Santa Claus.
“That’s when Christmas turned into just a commercial, and there was no room for results,” Belanger said.
Seuss’ Grinch sits somewhere in the middle — cuter than Krampus and shinier than Santa — making him the perfect figure for a volatile, uncertain age.
Workers check Grinch inflatables ready for shipment at a factory in Suixi County in central China’s Anhui Province on March 19.
(Wan SC/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
Grinch boosters point out that the villain turns and changes at the end of the story, shedding his hatred of Christmas.
“I always tell people, ‘Don’t you just love that his heart grew to 30?’ ” Taylor, the famous Santa, said of his increasingly popular events.
Others realize that he is not a reformed Grinch who robs schools and holiday parties or explodes on social media.
“Once he’s recovered, he’s no longer fun,” said Chemers.
That makes it difficult for the holiday villain to visit sick children in the hospital, as legions of Santas do every year, or comfort children who confide in him about bullying.
“The message is one of encouragement and optimism and acknowledgment of success and encouragement to try hard,” Taylor said. “These are good messages to improve the person Santa becomes his channel.”
The Grinch, by contrast, can confirm where you are, without asking you to be better.
“He can hear you and know what you’re thinking, because he has the same thoughts,” Darnell said of his favorite version of the character. “People want to know his heart and his mind, and that’s something they can’t ask Santa.”
