One of the top words looked up over the Christmas period was the word grinch. Most people know the word from the Dr Seuss story How the Grinch Stole Christmas which was made into a cartoon for TV and later a live-action movie.
As well as being the name of the fictional character, the word grinch is now also applied to anyone who shows a lack of willingness to participate in Christmas jollity.
The archetypal British anti-Christmas character is Ebenezer Scrooge, who appears in Charles Dickens’ tale A Christmas Carol. Scrooge is very mean and treats his employees extremely badly, but after seeing a series of ghosts, he realises what a good time Christmas should be and joins in the festivities generously and wholeheartedly.
Like grinch, the word Scrooge saw a sharp rise in the number of look-ups, but the two words will probably now lie low until December next year when the Christmas season returns.
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