A Christmas Surprise!

Since we helped Polar to put a big artificial tree together in the living room, Hanley Bear and I have known that it would soon be Christmas. 

Polar explained to us that Christmas is a very special time of the year for humans, sometimes for religious reasons too complicated for small bears to understand, but also because they have holidays from work and school, and give each other presents.

Wild bears don't have Christmas.  Some them hibernate through the darkest and coldest days of the year, so would miss it anyway.  Those who don't hibernate notice a day, just before Christmas, when the nights stop getting longer and start to become shorter again, which is when we know spring will return.  This is a special day for all animals and birds and, probably, for trees and plants too, although we can't ask them as they don't speak Bear or other animal languages and we don't speak Tree.

When we went to visit Grizzly's grandcubs, Hanley and I noticed lots of parcels in the car with us on the way there, and lots of different parcels on the way back, which Polar put under our Christmas tree.  After Grizzly and Polar went to bed, Hanley Bear and I took a closer look at the parcels.  The labels on them all had either Polar's human name or Grizzly's human name on, or both of their names, but there were no labels with our names on, not even very small ones.

'I wonder if that's because we were bad bears and played with Grizzly's cubs' toys?' I said, feeling sad.

'I don't think so, duck,' Hanley Bear explained.  'Human cubs have to write to someone called Santa Claus to get presents and, sometimes, they even go to see him to tell him what they would like.'

'Where does he live?' I asked, thinking that if we had his address, we could write to him too.

Hanley Bear had to think hard about the answer.  'In big shopping centres, I think.'

So imagine how excited we were when Polar put us in our bear bag and told us she was taking us with her to a big shopping centre for a surprise.  'We must be going to see Santa Claus!' I said to Hanley, as we put on our coats.

Hanley Bear cheered, even more loudly than he does when Stoke City score a goal.

However, when we got to the shopping centre we saw a poster with a picture of our bear hero on it.  We weren't going to see Santa Claus.  We were going to see Paddington!

'You'll both have to stay in your bear bag,' Polar warned us.  'The shops are very busy and, if I let you out, I'm afraid you might get stepped on.  We might have to wait for a little while too and I don't want you getting bored and climbing on the Christmas decorations.'

Polar queued up with us, still in our bear bag, along with lots of human cubs and their families.  The human cubs talked to us and stroked us, and Polar told them a little bit about who we were and my boat journey.  Then we saw Paddington, hugging human cubs and having his picture taken with them.
'He's bigger than I thought he would be,' said Hanley Bear.

'Perhaps his human cub friends, Judy and Jonathan, are very tall - like Polar,' I suggested.  'And he's older than he was when he started writing his books.'

Finally, we reached the front of the queue.  Polar said hello to Paddington and handed him our bear bag, with us sitting in it, being very good bears and not wriggling or fighting.  He looked very surprised!  While Polar took some pictures of us together, we asked Paddington if we would get presents for Christmas too.  He explained that, when he first came to London as a very young bear, children used to hang up big socks for Santa Claus to put their presents in, which were called Christmas stockings. 

'If you do that, you might get some presents - if you have been good bears,' he said.
We told him that we had been very good bears, which was almost true, and would be even better bears the following year, then we hugged him and promised we would be kind and helpful, like he always is. 

'We don't have socks to hang up to put presents in,' I said to Hanley, as Polar and Grizzly drove us home again.

'Let's borrow a pair of Polar's,' Hanley Bear suggested.  'Santa will be able to get lots and lots of presents into those!'

I didn't mean to be a greedy bear, but that sounded like a very good idea to me!