The Berenstain Bear’s Christmas Tree (1979)

              The sprawling network of intellectual property that goes by the umbrella term The Berenstain Bears all stemmed from the book The Big Honey Hunt, published in 1962 by Stan and Jan Berenstain.  The husband-and-wife duo had been writers and illustrators for many years, starting in 1951 with Berenstain’s Baby Book, a guide for new parents.  They also published one-off cartoons in magazines such as ‘The Saturday Evening Post’ and Good Housekeeping’ through the forties and fifties.  They were most inspired by the works of Theodore Geisel, who would go on to be their first editor.  After the success of their first bear-centric book they ended up producing a number of sequels, starting with The Bike Lesson: Another Adventure of the Berenstain Bears.  They would flesh out their conception of the bears over the next couple of decades by slowly turning their world into a bear version of ours, such as introducing the concept of the Bear Scouts in 1967, circuses and clowns in 1972, and a daughter to the family in 1974.  There’s even a Christmas book from 1970, although this special is not based on that, probably because they’d added a daughter by the time of this cartoon and there wasn’t enough plot in the book for a full half hour special.  It’s just about how the Bear dad is terrible at winter sports and only happens to take place on Christmas, the series wouldn’t get really Christiany until much later.

              The problem endemic with any anthropomorphized society, where you try to map human experiences onto humanized animals, is that even if you’re very careful you’re going to run into contradictions and logic gaps because humans really are unique in the entire animal kingdom.  While it can be useful as a short metaphor if you try to stretch what is basically just a metaphor out for any extended length of time the many differences between humans and animals are going to compound on each other.  Sometimes these internal conflicts let you explore some interesting ideas, such in the series ‘Beastars.’  Sometimes despite the efforts of a lot of smart, creative people it just kind of undermines the entire movie, such as with ‘Zootopia.’ 

              Normally in these specials the problem I run into is trying to reconcile an animal society existing alongside human society, such as in ‘The Tiny Tree,’ ‘Why the Bears Dance on Christmas Eve,’ and the one that broke me, ‘The Bear who Slept Through Christmas.’  Here this isn’t a problem, because although there is one line in the song at the end that implies the existence of humans I’m going to completely ignore it because I have other things to focus on.  Instead the issue here is this old problem: if all of the various kinds of animals are sentient it really brings up some ethical issues since many of these animals must eat each other.  In ‘The Tiny Tree’ they sidestepped the issue by making the hawk a vegetarian, here one of the first images we see is the dead face of a salmon slug jauntily over the shoulder of Papa Bear.  There’s even a stinger at the end where, as they prepare to dig into the fish, one of the kids pipes up to ask if it’s really ok to eat it considering the moral they’ve spent the entire special learning, which the dad completely blows off because of course there’s no answer.  The special plays it as a joke because if you take it seriously it can only lead to extremely dark places.

              To a certain extent I can shrug all of this off, this is always a problem with the entire way these worlds are constructed and finer minds than the Berenstain’s have failed to solve it.  Except really I can’t because this exact problem lies at the heart of the special’s story.  The plot of the cartoon is that on Christmas Eve Papa Bear and his two kids head out into the woods to cut down a Christmas tree only to find that all of the ones they want are already inhabited by other, fully sentient animals.  There’s a skunk with a mailbox at the tree base, there’s a family of songbirds with tiny glass windows and internal lighting.  It is not unknown to the bears that animals live in trees.  The Bear family itself lives inside the trunk of a tree.  This is basically like deciding to go out one day and tear down a smaller house to place inside your own house.

              Leaving the implied sociopathy of the bears aside (this is a tradition for them, how many years have been forcibly unhousing innocent families?), this is also a rather extreme example of what’s known in the field of semiotics as a detached or floating signifier.  I’m not using the terms precisely here, actual linguists would find fault with what I’m saying, but the basic idea is that of a symbol that has become separated from its original meaning, often to the point of becoming completely undefined.  The idea of a Christmas tree has long had a tenuous connection to the supposed religious basis of the Christmas holiday, in fact almost all Christmas traditions have been bolted onto the side of the original meaning.  It’s why there are often tirades about how people have forgotten the true meaning of Christmas, it was the reason Cromwell banned its celebration, there’s a long history of people getting upset when they remember how very unchristian all this symbolism really is.  However this connection, however tenuous, snaps entirely when you have a bear society with no indication that Christianity itself exists still laser focused on having Christmas trees.  There is no religious imagery or references in the special, and certainly no European pagan tradition to warp into the traditions we have today.  Christmas and the insistence upon the display of a decorative tree become things unto themselves, there is no basis for them to exist, the special just insists upon their existence on their own.

              So of course the bears having to go get a tree makes no sense.  There is no logical way that this world could exist and thus no way this tradition could naturally grow from it.  Papa Bear about to take an ax to someone’s house multiple times in an evening is treated as merely annoying to their residents because since no actual response is more reasonable than any other in this world of unreason why not have this one?  I wouldn’t harp on about this so much if the climax of the special isn’t the Bear family’s house, which I will point out again is itself a tree, being decorated with their tree ornaments and this being a revelatory moment for the family.  This apparently never occurred to them before.

              All of that is kind of my own personal problem.  The actual intended message of the special stinks as well, though.  A lot of the plots to these books, especially the early ones, are fundamentally the same: a situation arises, Wise Mama Bear advises what the family should do, Papa Bear ignores her and tries to bluster through, he fails and is repentant, and thus a lesson is learned.  Pretty basic stuff, and this one is no different.  On Christmas Eve the family decides it’s time to get a tree (this keeps happening, is it only fairly recently that people started putting up trees in the weeks before Christmas?).  Mama says to just go buy one from the lot down the road, which raises a bunch of questions on the nature of the housing supply in this universe, like are Christmas tree farms an example of NIMBYism or YIMBYism here?  Papa ignores this advice and ventures out into the forest with the kids to get the biggest and bestest tree to show everyone how much they love Christmas.

              There’s a song in there that explicitly endorses this performative aspect of having a Christmas tree.  The lyrics include lines such as “A tree to show how really, truly Christmasy we are” and “A Christmas tree / and all that it implies / a Christmas tree / and all it certifies.”  It doesn’t do a whole lot with this idea, it’s not like there’s an explicit competition in town or relatives coming over to impress.  In contrast the narrator states, in criticism of Papa Bear’s actions, that he’s lost site of the true meaning of Christmas, which is to consider the needs of others.  This translates, apparently, into not cutting their trees down.  Not normally a huge ask.

              After almost chopping down a couple of trees inhabited by various animals and birds the bears press on in the face of a sudden snowstorm, demonstrably undeterred by the knowledge that such trees are often inhabited by other animal families just as sentient as their own, until Papa Bear finally finds a tree inhabited by a family of little songbirds.  He presses his giant bear eye into their window and watches them decorate their own version of a Christmas tree, a dandelion, which admittedly is kind of adorable.  They recoil at the predator outside of the window then timidly wish him a merry Christmas, which seems to finally cause him to twig that other people exist and he’s basically wandering around an inhabited neighborhood with an ax intent on destruction.  This is what the special seems to mean about thinking of others: recognizing that other people’s lives have value.  

Which, when I state it like that, actually is a lesson worth learning and one people increasingly seem to have missed growing up.  All right, point to you, special.

The bears go back to town and find that the lot has now sold out of Christmas trees, but it’s fine because all of the various animals they met in the woods are so happy that Papa Bear decided not to destroy their homes that they’ve traveled to their house and used their own decorations to illuminate their tree house.  It’s played as heartwarming but I like to imagine that it’s all of the forest animals getting together to carefully demonstrate to this family of homicidal idiots that you already own a tree you could decorate, you fools, you absolute morons.

              This is an interesting example of a special based on a book series that was an original work for television and then later itself adapted into a book.  This book version was originally published in 1980 and was a fairly straight retelling of the special.  Following Stan Berenstain’s death in 2005 his son Mike Berenstain started collaborating with Jan Berenstain on the series until her subsequent death in 2012, whereupon he took over full creative control.  Beginning in 2008 the company started issuing a series of books under the Living Lights imprint that were of an explicitly Christian nature.  A revised edition the adaptation was released as part of this series and included religious imagery and text, such as a depiction of the manger scene and some Bible verses.  This is the version that is currently available for sale.  They’ve also released a number of Christmas products in the years since including several books and albums and untold other examples of merch.

              The Berenstain Bears property reached a cultural and commercial high in the 80’s and while much diminished today it still remains very popular.  There’s been consistent cultural criticism of the books over the years, from those on the right criticizing the trope of Papa Bear having to always learn lessons from wise Mama Bear to those on the left accusing it of containing fairly retrograde ideas on parenting and how kids should deal with their problems.  I personally think they haven’t aged particularly well over the years and although inspired by Dr. Suess don’t come close to the creativity or fun contained in his works.  The special strains to convey an anodyne moral not supported by the text and none of the jokes are funny.  It’s been issued many times over the years and is freely accessible on DVD and the usual sites, although it doesn’t seem to be available for commercial streaming.  I was never a particular fan of this series growing up and this special hasn’t done anything to improve my opinion, though I have to admit it hasn’t made it any worse.