Sonning's First Christmas

Hanley Bear and I were almost too excited to go to sleep at bedtime on Christmas Eve.  The big red socks we had borrowed from Polar were hanging up next to our bear bed and they were full of presents!

'We need to stay awake and watch over these, duck, in case a bad burglar man comes to steal them!' said Hanley.

'No we don't,' I told him.  'If a burglar tries to steal our presents, I'm sure Paddington will make him give them back, like he does in that little film we keep seeing on Polar and Grizzly's television!'  I tried to go to sleep but Hanley kept getting out of our bear bed to count everybody's presents, making sure they were still there, until Polar picked him up and carried him all around the house, showing him that the doors and windows were properly locked.

'Go to sleep now, bears,' she said.  'And don't worry; your presents are quite safe.'

Hanley said he was going to stay awake all night on guard anyway but, almost as soon as Polar turned off the lights, he fell sound asleep.  So did I.

As soon as we woke up, we ran around to the big socks and started sniffing and squeezing them, trying to work out what was inside,  We thought Polar and Grizzly would open their presents as soon as they got up, like we wanted to, but they made us eat our breakfast first, then they started preparing things for dinner.

'We'll open our presents together very soon,' Polar said, but we couldn't wait.

'I can smell chocolate in my Christmas sock!' cried Hanley Bear.
'And I can smell honey!' I cheered.

We started pulling things out of the big red socks and, when Polar and Grizzly came in from the kitchen, there were bear presents all over the floor.  We both had huge jars of honey, which we tried to open at once. 

'Leave those alone until after Christmas, little bears,' Grizzly said.  'You'll have lots of other tasty things to eat today.'  Polar stuck labels on the jars so we would know which jar belonged to which bear, and moved them out of our reach. 

We could still smell chocolate in the socks, so we turned them upside down and shook them.  Imagine how surprised we both were when some huge gold coins rolled out.

'We're rich!' gasped Hanley Bear.

We started planning what we would buy with our treasure.  We decided that Hanley Bear needed more boat clothes and his own life-jacket, and I said I would buy him his own bear bed so he didn't have to share mine, as he wriggles about in his sleep and wakes me up. 

'We promised Paddington we would be kind and helpful,' Hanley Bear reminded me.  'We ought to buy some new socks for people whose small animal friends don't have jumpers, so their human friends can make sock jumpers for them out of their old ones.'

'We could buy tins of rice pudding for bears who live in poor families,' I said.  'And jam too.  If we give some of our treasure to Grizzly and Polar, I'm sure they'll help us.'

We put half of our treasure to one side, to buy Bear Things for us.  The other half, for doing good things for poor bears and their human friends, we called our Paddington Fund.

'Does money usually smell of chocolate?' I asked Hanley, as we stacked up the Paddington Fund coins.

'No, duck,' he said.

'This money does.'

Hanley sniffed at the Paddington Fund.  'You're right - it does!'  He bit one of the coins.  His sharp little teeth went right through it!  'The coins are chocolate,' he said, spitting out some gold-coloured paper after munching through half of the coin.  'They aren't real money after all.'

'Oh no!' I said, feeling very sad that we wouldn't be able to use our treasure to help poor bears, although I do like chocolate very much and I didn't feel quite as sad when I had eaten the other half of the chocolate coin. 

'Honestly, bears, you won't enjoy your Christmas lunch if you eat chocolate now!' Polar said crossly, putting the remaining coins next to our honey and out of our reach.  'Be good bears and help us to unwrap the rest of the presents.'

There were more things for us.  We had a wrapped up parcel each from Polar and Grizzly.  When we opened those, we found Polar had made us new Christmas sock jumpers and matching hats.  They looked very smart and were soft and fluffy, so we knew she had made them from new socks.

'We could go and visit wild bears in the Arctic now!' I said to Hanley Bear, but I don't think he liked that idea very much.  Hanley thinks wild bears are scary and might eat us.

We also had a small present from each other, which were things we had found at Grizzly's Grandcubs' house when they fell out of Christmas crackers.  I gave Hanley two little green bats and a shuttlecock, so we could play badminton together when we were at home on our own, and Hanley Bear had wrapped up some small tools for me, which he said will be useful the next time I help to repair our boat. 

Polar and Grizzly had nice presents too.  Grizzly had a new hat from us, which we had suggested Polar buy for him because he doesn't have very much fur on his head and we don't want him to get cold.  Grizzly's grown-up girl cub bought Polar some pairs of new thermal socks, which we hope she will wear out soon, because they will make us very snug sock jumpers.  She also bought Polar some Paddington stories on CDs, which we have added to our collection of Bear Things.

We were very glad we didn't eat all of the chocolate coins and the honey, because Grizzly was quite right about Christmas dinner being scrummy.  My favourite thing was Christmas pudding, which is even nicer than rice pudding, because it has fruit and nuts in it.  So do mince pies, which we had for tea.

At bedtime, we had one final Christmas present - Polar had found a nice box to make Hanley his own snug little bear bed, with red covers, and she had put all our Bear Things and our bear beds together in a big basket.   She was going to play us one of the Paddington stories, but we both fell fast asleep almost as soon as we were tucked up in our beds.

We had enjoyed a lovely Christmas.  We hope you did too.