Christmas Day

Now Christmas Day has come round again —
and poor North Polar Bear has got a bad pain!
They say he’s swallowed a couple of pounds
of nuts without cracking the shells! It sounds
a Polarish sort of thing to do —
but that isn’t all, between me and you:
he’s eaten a ton of various goods
and recklessly mixed all his favourite foods,
honey with ham and turkey with treacle,
and pickles with milk. I think that a week'll
be needed to put the old bear on his feet.
And I mustn’t forget his particular treat:
plum pudding with sausages and turkish delight
covered with cream and devoured at a bite!
And after this dish he stood on his head —
it's rather a wonder the poor fellow’s not dead!

Absolute ROT:
I have not got
a pain in my pot.

                                            Rude fellow!

I do not eat
turkey or meat:
I stick to the sweet.
Which is why
(as all know) I
am so sweet myself,
you thinuous elf!
Goodby!
                                            He means fatuous
                            No I don't, you’re not fat,
                            but thin and silly.
You know my friends too well to think
(although they’re rather rude with ink)
that there are really quarrels here!
We’ve had a very jolly year
(except for Polar Bear’s rusty nail);
but now this rhyme must catch the Mail —
a special messenger must go,
in spite of thickly falling snow,
or else this won’t get down to you
on Christmas day. It’s half past two!
We’ve quite a ton of crackers still
to pull, and glasses still to fill!
Our love to you on this Noel—
and till the next one, fare you well!

Father Christmas
Polar Bear
Ilbereth
Paksu and Valkotukka

J.R.R. Tolkien, Letters from Father Christmas: Centenary Edition, ed. by Baillie Tolkien (London: HarperCollinsPublishers, 2019; 1976), pp. 174-77.

Polar Bears the Great Wanderers

The bear is a great wanderer not solely because it travels far, but because it travels with curiosity, and tirelessly. The Eskimo hunters in Greenland mean that it covers the ground successfully and intelligently when they pronounce the word pisugtooq.

Eskimos, long-time, keen observers of the polar bear, have advanced other thoughts about polar bears that science has treated with skepticism, and in some quarters with cynical disdain. Eskimos widely assert, for example, that most polar bears are left-pawed, that if one must leap in desperation from a charging bear it should always be to the bear’s right.6 Eskimos have also asserted that polar bears push blocks of ice ahead of them as shields when they are stalking seals; that a wounded bear will staunch the flow of its blood with snow; that they will hurl ice and rocks at walrus to wound and distract them, hoping to snatch an unprotected calf; and that females use anal plugs when they den.

Refuting any of these things is a complicated business. It becomes not only a denial of the integrity of the person telling the story, but a denial of the resourcefulness of the polar bear. Too, because of poor translations, you might end up refuting something that was never meant. The best field biologists, with a fundamental grasp of the animal’s behavior, take the attitude that these things could happen, though they themselves have not seen them. The anthropologist Richard Nelson has offered succinct advice on this issue. “Eskimos,” he writes, “are highly reliable observers of animal behavior, and many of their least believable statements have been proved to me by personal observation.” Some scientists strongly resisted the notion that bears might use tools until a Canadian biologist found evidence in 1972, on the north coast of Devon Island, that a female with two cubs had smashed in the roof of a ringed-seal lair with a 45-pound piece of ice. Scientists have also found that bears intentionally stalk small prey like lemmings, which Eskimos have long claimed they do. And that a polar bear will hunt sea ducks by coming up underneath a flock of them in the water like a killer whale.

Barry Lopez, Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape  (New York: Open Road Integrated Media, 2013; 1986). p.101.