How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (TV special) animation divisions of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, where Jones was under contract at the time. CBS, coming off the surprise success of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" a year before, allotted Jones and MGM a $315,000 budget, more than four times what Bill Melendez was offered to produce "A Charlie Brown Christmas". The original broadcast was sponsored by the Foundation for Full Service Banks whose sponsor plugs within the original airing were later edited out for subsequent broadcasts. The entirety of the book's text, with some slight embellishment, was adapted into the special; to pad the special to a full 30-minute time slot,
True meaning of Christmas Brown Christmas", first aired in 1965 and repeated every year since. “That’s what Christmas is all about Charlie Brown”, says Linus, referring to the birth of Christ. Dr. Seuss' "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!" (1957) also illustrates the topos, and was very influential in the form of an animated TV special produced in 1966. The phrase and the associated moral became used as a trope in numerous Christmas films since the 1960s. The phrase found its way into the 2003 "Urbi et Orbi" address of Pope John Paul II, "The "crib" and the "tree": precious symbols, which hand down in