Small Bears at Christmas

It's almost Christmas Day!  Over the last couple of weeks, we bears have been helping our humans to get ready for the holidays.  We love Christmas time, because humans are encouraged to think of each other and human cubs get very excited about it too.

Early in the month it looked very Christmassy, as we had some snow.  It looked very pretty, although we were a little bit sad that there was not enough to build snowbears or go sledging.

On the first Friday of the month, we went out for a proper Christmas dinner with some of our human waterways friends, and had our first mince pies of the season.  We love mince pies and are so glad that they make little ones specially for small bears.  Everyone thought we looked very smart, because we had brushed our fur and put our Christmas jumpers on.

There is plenty to do at home.  One of our favourite jobs is helping Polar to decorate the Christmas tree.  Polar had a clever idea to make room for it this year, folding down one of the old-fashioned easy chairs and covering it with a Christmassy cloth, but she has trapped our basket with our spare clothes and coats underneath it!  

Luckily, we had already changed into our Christmas jumpers.

Polar fits the tree sections together, and we help to straighten out all the branches.  Then we climb up and down the tree for fun, while she untangles the lights and decorations.

Hanley Bear always helps with the lights, as he likes to do technical things.  He holds the wire very carefully between his teeth as he climbs up through the tree, spacing them out as evenly as he can.  

He was very proud of his work this year, although he ran back to sit with Grizzly once he had plugged them in, as they were listening to a football match on the radio. 

My job was to sort out the baubles, so we could put the smaller ones towards the top and the bigger ones lower down.  Soon, there were small bears climbing all over the tree with decorations.

Polar passed the tinsel up to us, and some strings of shiny beads, and soon the whole tree was covered in pretty things.  We were very proud of it.

Once the tree was decorated, it felt very Christmassy indeed.  We thought it would be fun to decorate some more trees, so we took some of the left-over tinsel and baubles outdoors and hung them on the apple and plum trees! 

We had special Christmas cards with us on to send to some of our human friends and to our bear friends from Twitter, and have been lucky enough to receive some cards, and even little presents, from some of them in return.

The biggest surprise came when we opened a package from our friend Tour Guide Ted - inside, was a little bear cub!  His name is Dudley and that's where he's from, too - Dudley in the West Midlands.  He is almost as small as Waverley!  They are already great pals and are hoping to have lots of adventures together in the New Year.  

Dudley isn't our only new bear friend, however.  A few days before, Aunty Tina had called in with a bear she had rescued from a charity shop in Tunstall, who she thought might like to join our hug.  Here's a picture of Tunstall Bear - or Tunny.  

As you can see from his hat and jacket, Tunny is an airline pilot.  He wants to travel the world, so we hope he will be able to go to visit our bear friends in other countries in the New Year and take them small presents from Stoke-on-Trent - but he will need some trousers first!

But now, it's time to send Christmas hugs to all our pals and to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!