Hug a bear day

Twitter tells me that today is #hugabearday, which is odd because I've been thinking about Teddy bears a lot lately. I'm assuming that the day has been invented by a British Teddy manufacturer, as checking the American National Awareness day list today is National Canine Lymphoma Awareness Day and National Bittersweet Chocolate with Almonds Day, which is a good job as Americans on Twitter have been confused about the hashtag and have posted pictures of real bears. I am very disappointed that Google won't help me find the source of this day. I need to know whose idea it was and why?

Why do we need a hug a bear day?

No one needs to hug a real bear. To suggest such an idea would be irresponsible. I can't imagine London Zoo using the day as a PR technique, with hundreds of parents lining their small children up by the polar bear enclosure for a quick mauling. 

If the day was invented by a soft toy manufacturer then I can't understand why they felt the need to keep their identity a secret. I've looked at the websites of British manufacturers and they don't mention the day at all. I'm suspicious that a journalist made the day up so that they would be allowed to write something warm and fuzzy once a 

year. 

Wherever this day has come from I still find it a bit odd that I have noticed it for the first time just as I have been contemplating the whole Teddy bear situation. 

There have been so many questions circling my head for the last few weeks.

It started when I went into my daughter's bedroom and noticed teddy Mildred abandoned on the bed.

I thought about how children name their bears, why only one gets chosen to be the special companion, why they get left behind during our twenties but somehow end up back in a cupboard or the loft in our thirties forties and beyond. I wondered if there comes a time post fifty when we finally consign the flea ridden fluff-stuffed cloth to the bin. The thought of doing that to my own teddy leads me to conclude that these are not ordinary bears but are spirit beings with a life and a soul of their own. 

I know. You're thinking, "She's finally cracked. The pressure of letting children bang things on a daily basis has finally taken its toll," but bear (if you'll excuse the pun) with me.

My daughter's bear was far from the only stuffed toy she had. Mildred arrived in a box, through the post, on her first birthday. The Long Suffering Husband and I didn't choose the name, nor did my sister, who had put the box in the post. He was just called Mildred. And, yes, Mildred was a boy. 

My bear was called Claude and I don't know why. My sister's favourite was known as Mo and as the much older bossy sister I remember that she used to get very upset when I tried to give him a much more suitable name.

"But he's called Mo," she would unreasonably insist. 

These bears just arrive when they are needed. I think that Mildred has done his job. He guided a small girl through her childhood and has sent her off in the world to become an adult. He will probably go to keep a watchful eye on her children, just as Claude did with mine. While they  were growing up, Claude sat, bald and blind providing the occasional disapproving tut. They were aware of him, never played with him but Claude was always a serious bear. He liked to help me learn the flags of the world and we would chuckle together about words. "Catastrophe. Ha ha. Cat wins an award but it's too big for it to hold so it falls down the stairs." We were reading Professor Branestawm's dictionary.

When I was about 14 we read Brideshead Revisited and were completely taken with Sebastian, a fully grown man who took his teddy everywhere with him. I think it appealed to us because, like Aloysius, Claude  also had an unusual name and secretly wished that he were small enough and I were brave enough for me to carry him around.  I have since discovered that this man-bear partnership was based on John Betjemin an his teddy, who was called Archibald Ormsby Gore. That is not a name any child or parent would give to a stuffed animal but can only have been the bear's real full name.

Claude is still partial to a chapter of Brideshead before bed

When my sister was still very small she accidentally left Mo on a Park and Ride bus in Oxford. You hear about parents who have to go and buy a replacement when this happens but if I remember correctly Mo found his way back to my sister, which is good because I know she wouldn't have been convinced by a replacement, who might even have had a different name. It is not unusual for lost bears to find their way home. Jenny Murray, from Woman's Hour, told the Daily Mail that her bear who was unimaginatively named Teddy was lost in a shop and although they looked for him and her mother tried to replace him she remained inconsolable, until one day, two weeks later, a Policeman arrived at the doorstep to bring the wayward bear home. I suppose every spirit bear needs to let his fur down once in a while. 

Some bears just know they have to stick close. Sir Robert Clark, one of Churchill's special operations executives had a bear called Falla arrive into his life when he was two. Falla knew how important it was to stick close. He parachuted behind enemy lines and served his time patiently with Robert as a prisoner of war in Italy.

Carol Vorderman still has her bear, Bungee. They would communicate in their own secret language. She says that she keeps him around so that he can remind her where she came from.

Maybe there is no mystery to #hugabearday. The bears finally want recognition for their years of service. It is time to remember the guides, the brave warriors and those that fell along the way.

Did you have a spirit bear?