Daniel85

Seeing as it’s less than 10 days till Christmas, and I haven’t really been blogging much about Christmas, and I carry on like I’m the king of fucking Christmas, I thought I’d better do some blogging about Christmas. (New Year’s resolution: fewer run-on sentences.)

When I was a little kid I used to spend a lot of time at my grandparents’ house, because both my parents worked. I spent enough time there that I had an entirely different range of toys and videos to the ones at home. Grandma defended this separate entertainment republic fiercely, absolutely refusing to ever let me take a ‘grandma’s house toy (or video)’ home.

I can remember among the grandma’s house videos were an animated film of Black Beauty, a video filled with animated versions of classic Golden Book tales (The Pokey Little Puppy, The Saggy Baggy Elephant, etc), and this budget collection of public domain cartoons:

I really vividly remembered that video cover, especially the purple, so I knew exactly what it was when I spotted it at a Video Ezy liquidation sale last year.

The cartoons on this video are all supposedly Christmassy, but there’s actually only one real Christmas toon on there: “Santa’s Surprise”, the classic Little Audrey exercise in racist caricature. Bones through the hair of the little African kid, Chinese kid with a speech impediment, etc. Really uplifting stuff.

The rest of the cartoons were only loosely related to Christmas, either through the season of winter or involving toys or having a religious tone. My favourite short on the video was a winter one, “Jack Frost”. It’s a 1934 ComiColor production, from when the great Ub Iwerks told Walt Disney to go fuck himself and started his own studio. Iwerks’ shortlived ComiColor series put out some solid animated shorts, mostly based on fairytales and scored by the brilliant Carl Stalling.

If you’ve never seen “Jack Frost” (and I’m hoping that some of you have!), do yourself a favour and check it out now: 

Or just read my review of my favourite bits!

The story is basically that of a proud little bear getting his come-uppance from Old Man Winter.

While all the woodland animals are getting ready for winter’s onset, this little shit’s just stuffing around, jumping in the washing basket and stuff.

His mum comes and puts him through the wring-dryer, which pretty much serves him right for not being a productive member of the woodland commune.

Shortly after, Jack Frost arrives to start spreading the news that Old Man Winter’s on his way, so everyone better get the fuck inside their treehouses.

The bear family retreats to the safety of its tree trunk abode, and our little friend gets put to bed. He slips out the bottom Dennis The Menace style while his mum’s still tucking him in…

And gets the shit smacked out of him for it.

Cowering in bed, afraid of another beating administered by his mum’s paw…

… the little bear decides to teach his parents a lesson by running away in the night.

I bet you can see where this is going, with the impending arrival of Old Man Winter and all. The funny thing is that even though this was clearly intended to scare kids out of running away from home, the lil bear looked so cool with his tramp’s suitcase-on-a-stick that it actually made me want to pack up and leave.

Another amusing, confusing reversal of the cartoon’s intent is that I was actually way more terrified of Jack Frost, the good guy, than Old Man Winter, the villain.

Just look at how freakin’ scary he looks, peering in at the window:

I find it really interesting to trace my obsessions and neuroses back to the literature and entertainment of my childhood, and this is one of ‘em right here. To this day I cannot sleep with an uncovered window. There has to be a heavy curtain pulled right across the window, with not even a sliver of outside visible.

In his travels, the bear comes across Jack Frost, who’s all like ‘Yo, son, get the fuck back in yo’ house! Ol’ Man Winter gon’ fuck you up!”

But then the bear is like “Ain’t no thang, J-Fross. I’m a grizzly bear.”

So the bear continues on his rebellious way, to come across a scarecrow. But not just any scarecrow— this is the coolest damn scarecrow since the one in that song we all learned in grade prep, about all the cows sleeping and then up jumped the scarecrow.

The scarecrow comes to life and proceeds to perform what only be termed some kinda German scat-singing breakdance, while a chorus of Ents belt out a Negro spiritual in the background.

As usual, the little furball feels the need to prove how undaunted he is, this time putting up his dukes:

As if in response to his unabashed hubris, a cold wind starts a-blowin’, and the scarecrow is turned into a snowman. To everything, turn, turn, turn… there is a season, turn, turn, turn.

Then outta nowhere, Old Man Winter lopes in with his giant strides and the bear shits himself and runs. It’s actually scarier now than it was when I was a kid…

The bear frantically knocks on every door in every tree trunk, but all the commie critters turn him away. Except the skunk, who’s only too happy to invite him in…

The skunk smells like crap, though, so the bear decides to take his chances with the furious elemental god. (Aww… skunk don’t gots no fwiends….)

The bear jumps in a log to hide, but there’s no fooling Old Man Winter.

He casts some ice from his fingertips to turn the log into a jail cell. If Old Man Winter were any kinda villain, he’d stroke his beard and say “How ironic that the very place you sought sanctuary has become your prison”, but he doesn’t.

(And speaking of villains, I always thought my obsession with winter and snow came from the sheer awesomeness of The Empire Strikes Back, but it probably dates back to this cartoon.)

Thankfully, after OMW pisses off, Jack Frost rocks up. He originally just came to mock the little bear and tell him I told you so, but Grizzly Jr cries like a bitch and admits he was wrong.

‘Jack Frost paused a moment, considering this new development. “Well… just as long as you’re traumatised,” he said finally, dabbing his brush on his magic palette and transforming the bear’s icy prison bars into delicious candy canes.’ 

Still on the topic of finding the origins of one’s obsessions, I think I can pretty safely say my love of candy canes comes from watching this cartoon as a greedy little 4-year-old. I just can’t get enough candy canes come Christmas time.

Jacky Frost and Grizzly Jr hop on the palette, and head home X-Treme Sportz style.

And there’s that creepy-ass little goblin peering in at the window again. None of you are sleeping tonight.