Grinch? Where?

Okay, please. Let's all agree that the media can't use the word "Grinch" in Christmas-related stories.

Especially in stories that don't actually give them reason to do so.

ABC2News here just ran a story about a woman who decorated the trees outside her business with huge wreaths. They were two deciduous (probably pear, but who can tell in December?) trees in that strip between the sidewalk and the street, in some city block whose precise location I missed. At any rate, the story was that someone stole the big wreaths off the trees. The woman said it was "disheartening at this time of year when people don't appreciate what you're trying to do for them," and the reporter said she, the woman, wasn't letting the theft spoil her Christmas. "She plans on decorating the trees with big bows, and we just hope that the Grinch will leave them alone."

Wow. There's a lot of assuming going on there. A real Grinch, just to start, would have taken all the decorations, not just two big, probably expensive, probably pretty, wreaths. And someone who didn't "appreciate" the decorations would have done the same, or else defaced things.

So, is this a delicate take on the War on Christmas™? Or just a case of a reporter failing to resist the temptation of a beckoning cliché? Either way, it doesn't strike me as accurate reporting.