December 18, 2012

Stan and Jan Berenstain: The Bears' Christmas

I'm watching! I'm watching!
But tell me, Pop, please ...
Are you going to go jumping
without any skis?

Before Stan and Jan started their Berenstain Bears series, they wrote and illustrated a number of books for the Beginner Books series (made famous by Dr. Seuss). Their books included Bears on Wheels and the very first Bear family stories, featuring Mama, Papa and Little Bear.

Even in these early books, Papa Bear was a bit of a primordial Homer Simpson, not quite as competent as he'd like to be for his son, getting in to one scrape after another has Papa tries to instruct Little Bear in the important things, like collecting honey and ski jumping..

One could argue that in The Bears' Christmas at least, this reflects an ancient tradition of loosening rules and reversing roles during the Solstice and Christmas celebrations. In ancient through medieval times, the slaves and peasants would exchange places with the ruling classes for a night or entire week. Thus, Papa Bear's seeming incompetence isn't real, but all part of the conviviality of the season.

Of course, he's not particularly good in the other books with riding a bike or gathering honey, blowing that theory out of the water..

For Christmas, Santa has brought Little Bear "A sled! And some skates!/And he brought me some skis." Papa and Little Bear then spend the afternoon practicing with the new toys, with Papa having all the disasters a first-time sledder, skater, or skier dreads having: knocking the windo out of himself, breaking through the ice, and losing the skis and turning into a giant, desctructive snowball. Meanwhile, Little Bear easily masters these new winter skills — perhaps Papa is not such a bad teacher after all.

In the end, Little Bear has "our best Christmas ever." Papa Bear has learned that important lesson of parenting: you're going to look stupid much of the time, just roll with it.