Celebrate the Holidays with the Bare Bears!
The holidays are here — and the Bare Bears are celebrating just about everything.
The Men of Bare Bear Fantasy Vol. 04: Happy Holidays is now available for the most wonderful time of the year!
From Thanksgiving dinner through New Year’s Day, I’ve always loved this stretch of the calendar: the food, the decorations, the lights, the shopping, the crowds, the parties, and all those traditions that somehow make November and December feel different from the rest of the year.
But for Happy Holidays, I wanted to look beyond the celebrations I grew up with and see what else happens around the world when the days get shorter and winter arrives.
That turned into 30 full-page illustrations divided into three sections: Celebrations Around the World, Seasonal Fun, and Holiday Characters & Winter Folklore.
The Bare Bears celebrate familiar favorites like Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s alongside Hanukkah, Bodhi Day, Las Posadas, Yule, Pancha Ganapati and Kwanzaa.
And, naturally, they remain completely overdressed for none of them.
Inside you’ll find:
🦃 Thanksgiving dinner and Christmas morning
🕎 Hanukkah and traditions from celebrations around the world
🎄 Christmas trees, caroling and holiday decorating
❄️ Snowball fights, snow angels, skiing, sleigh rides and other winter fun
🛍️ Black Friday shopping and a visit with Mall Santa
🍆 Plenty of big, bearded, body-positive Bare Bears celebrating in the buff
🎅 Santa Claus and some much less familiar winter visitors
👹 Krampus, Jack Frost, Ded Moroz, Mari Lwyd and Pamola
🖍️ 30 single-sided, full-page illustrations designed for coloring
And then things get a little strange...
Santa may be the most famous fellow associated with the season, but spend a little time exploring winter traditions and folklore and you discover that he has some very interesting company.
There’s Krampus, the fearsome figure of Alpine tradition. Ded Moroz, or Grandfather Frost, arrives from Slavic tradition looking more like a winter wizard than the Santa most Americans know. Wales contributes the wonderfully bizarre Mari Lwyd, a decorated horse skull carried from house to house during a midwinter wassailing tradition.
And from much closer to home comes Pamola, the powerful supernatural being associated with Katahdin in Penobscot tradition, traditionally described with a moose’s head, human body, and the wings and talons of an eagle.
Short introductions throughout the book provide a little background on celebrations and traditions that may be unfamiliar, along with some ideas about the folklore characters you’re coloring.
Of course, there's plenty of familiar nonsense, too.
The Bears decorate the tree, build a snowman, go skiing, take a sleigh ride, make snow angels, sing Christmas carols and recover from New Year’s Eve.
They even audition for the Reindeer Games — my thoroughly ridiculous 21st-century reality-show take on the big holiday TV variety shows I grew up watching, with a little inspiration from a certain red-nosed reindeer who was famously excluded for being different.
New to the Bare Bears?
Happy Holidays is the fourth book in The Men of Bare Bear Fantasy Coloring Books series.
The original The Men of Bare Bear Fantasy Coloring Book puts the Bears into everyday situations in a world where clothing-optional is the rule, rather than the exception! Gods Among Us sends them around the world and through mythology as legendary gods, spirits, and supernatural figures. And Tricks & Treats lets them loose on Halloween traditions, monsters, horror favorites and other things that go bump in the night.
SHOP THE MEN OF BARE BEAR FANTASY COLORING BOOKS ON AMAZON
The Men of Bare Bear Fantasy Coloring Books are also available in Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Visit your local Amazon website and search “Bare Bear Fantasy” to find the books available in your country.
Whether you celebrate everything, something, or simply enjoy the food, lights and excuse to have a good time, grab your coloring tools and join the Bears for the season.
Happy Holidays from the Bare Bears!