The Grinch from the book and the cartoon is an AU Kris Kringle/Claus.
Let's say that the animals couldn't get to Claus in time to protect him from the Winter Warlock. The Warlock discovers him, and as evil as he is, he cannot bring himself to kill a child. He raises him as his own - instilling him with a hatred of all things good and fun. Somewhere in the Grinch's young adult years, he comes across a lost dog from Sombertown and takes him in, thus explaining how he got Max. Eventually, the Warlock passes on as a mean and despicable creature due to Claus never showing up to help him, and leaves the mountain to "Grinch", as he has come to be called. Perhaps due to a split in time, somebody else has taken on the role of Santa Claus and has gone along a similar path that The Grinch would have (i.e. becoming a world-renowned giftgiver). Sombertown, once the Burgermeister falls out of power, becomes a happier place and is renamed Whoville to reflect this.- But how would he have gotten his green skin/fur?
- Perhaps he learned magic from the Warlock and had a spell go wrong?
- But how would he have gotten his green skin/fur?
Somber town had become independent from the kingdom by the time Kris came.
This would explain how the mayor of a backwater town has the authority to criminalize the 'First toymakers to the king' despite presumably answering to the same authority if the town was still part of the king's dominion.- Alternatively, they were toymakers to a former dynasty which has since died out or otherwise fallen out of power.
- Going off the vaguely Germanic setting, this can be reconciled with actual German history by assuming that the person whom the Kringles refer to as "the king" was, in fact, the Holy Roman Emperor (possibly Charlemagne). According to this theory, the story takes place some time after the break up of the Holy Roman Empire, in the era of All the Little Germanies. Granted, you have to Broad Strokes over a lot of Anachronism Stew and Where the Hell Is Springfield? to make this work...
Grimsley and the Kringles misread the baby's name tag.
In fact, the tag and the note were of an advanced technology, but damaged during a long transit so that their translation matrix malfunctioned. In truth, the baby's name was : KAL-EL. Explains quite a bit, doesn't it? The Winter Warlock became 'disenchanted' because he ran out of spell slots
In D&D, Warlocks only get a total of 4 spell slots, which means they run out of magic fast. So the Winter Warlock just ran out of all his spells and had to rely on little cantrips like dancing lights to make the Christmas trees glow.- You’re kidding, right? This show came out decades before Dungeons and Dragons even came out. You are trying to shoehorn a generic storybook sorcerer into a game system that came out much, much later. Magic existed in stories long before Gary Gygax was born....
- Aren't you a buzzkill...
Santa has mild PTSD from the events of his youth.
This special, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and The Year Without a Santa Claus all presumably take place in the same continuity. Here, the young Kris/Claus is as jolly, lively, and kind as can be. But in the other Rankin/Bass specials, the older Santa's moods can be... uneven. In Rudolph he's a bit of a Grumpy Old Man who won't let Rudolph join his team at first just because of his red nose, and who's so preoccupied with work that he won't eat and loses weight, while in The Year Without... he's exhausted and sick from overwork and becomes depressed thinking no one believes in him anymore. Maybe having once been persecuted as an outlaw, jailed, and finally forced to flee from civilization to the North Pole had more of an effect on his psyche than he let on, which explains these bouts of moodiness in his old age. Kris Kringle's birth name was Nicholas Claus.
"Claus" is the surname of Kris's birth family, which is why the name is on his tag as a baby. The reason Santa Claus is often called "Saint Nicholas" is Nicholas is his birth name. Some time between this special and The Year Without a Santa Claus, the Winter Warlock sacrificed himself so that Santa and Jessica could become immortal.
In no other Rankin/Bass Christmas special does the Winter Warlock ever appear, not even in specials that supposedly take place in the same continuity as this one. The most logical explanation is that he died. Yet how could that be, when he was a magical being, and seemingly ordinary humans like Santa and Mrs. Claus have lived on from medieval times to the present day? Maybe the latter is related to the former. Maybe somehow, Winter sacrificed his own immortality to give it to Santa and Jessica, so they could go on making children happy forever. This would obviously be too sad a story for a Rankin/Bass special, which is why it's never been shown or mentioned onscreen. The Winter Warlock overthrew the king, who went into hiding in Sombertown, and took over his castle
The doctor who treats Meisterburger bears a striking resemblance to the picture of the king in the Kringles' book, including the massive sideburns and diamond-shaped glasses, perhaps too close to be a coincidence. If he's in Sombertown working as a doctor instead of acting as king, then he lost his position somehow; maybe to a revolution, maybe some other threat to his power that made it safest for him to step down. Meisterburger is letting him live and work in town, with a family, so whatever happened probably wasn't Meisterburger's doing. The next most likely candidate is the Warlock. Sombertown seems relatively protected from the Warlock, as long as its residents don't stray too far past the borders, so it would be a good place for one of his enemies to hide out. Maybe that's how the Warlock got "his" mountain and "his" imposing castle—they used to belong to the king. Scrooge-related man, grouchy store lady and businessman appearing before the ending song are descendants of Sombertown citizens.
Yes, I'm aware that as the years go by, they become more accepting of Santa Claus and more disapproving of the Burgermeister’s “No Toy” rule, but what if some of them stayed "somber" even after rest of them become better folks, and passed their vices to their children? I am probably not only one who felt that these three people have similar vibe to the general adult populace of Sombertown during the Burgermeister Meisterburger rule. The Winter Warlock was a warlock of Winterbolt
While Winterbolt would be a Sealed Evil in a Can at this point (and remains that way for centuries), that doesn't mean it's impossible for others to either pledge themselves to the evil being or draw from his power while he's sleeping. This also provides another reason why letting go of his evil would lead to "Winter's" Redemption Demotion. When he stopped following Winterbolt's example, he became less able to draw on his unwitting patron's power.