We don’t usually associate bears with Christmas. But among this year’s Christmas stamps, there one is, looking rather startled to be included with the more traditional reindeer, snowmen and evergreen trees.

It seems that bears have been on our minds lately. There have been several magazine articles in both scholarly and popular periodicals, mostly concerning the danger to bears from human encroachment on their habitat and the effects of global warming.
We still equate bears with “cute” and “cuddly,” despite their impressive size (a grizzly might stand 12 feet high and weigh 1,800 pounds), and their ferocity (they have been known to kill humans). Nevertheless, we hold a soft spot in our hearts for bears and even feel protective toward them. In fact, our most famous bears have been rescues.
One day in November 1902, President Teddy Roosevelt called out, “Spare the bear!”€ refusing to shoot a bear while on a hunt.
The event was immortalized in a cartoon by Clifford Berryman in the Washington Post. That cartoon, along with a stuffed bear for sale, soon appeared in Morris and Rose Michtom’s shop window.
“Teddy” bears became the “in” toy that Christmas, and with a stuffed toy business already up and running, Margaret Steiff, a polio victim who went in business so as not to be a burden to her family, was well prepared to take orders. She sold 3,000 of her bears in 1903.
About a decade later, a young Englishman vacationing in Canada rescued a bear cub when his mother had been killed in a hunt. He brought the cub back to England, but when he was called into service for World War II, the army wouldn’t let him take his bear with him, so he donated it to the London Zoo, where it was adopted by the whole city and nicknamed Winnie, because he had been rescued in Winnipeg.
On Christmas Eve, 1925, A.A. Milne published a bedtime story for the London Evening News about a bear, and named him Winnie for the famous bear in the zoo he had remembered from his Cambridge days. The story was so popular Milne published his first Winnie-the-Pooh book the next year.
Back in the U.S. in the 1950s, there was a raging wildfire in Capitan, New Mexico. Inspecting the debris afterwards, park rangers discovered a bear cub who had fled to the top of a tree and couldn’t get down. They rescued him, nicknamed him “Smokey,” and the rest is history.
Look around the local antique shops for a bear you can rescue this Christmas -- stuffed, ceramic, metal or crystal -- as a gift, stocking stuffer, decoration or wrapping accessory. Whether it’s Teddy, Winnie, Smokey, or some bear to call your own, he’ll definitely be the “in”€ guest this season.
P.S. Here’s another gift idea: among the books recommended books as Christmas gifts in the New York Times this year is: “Bears: A Brief History,” by Bernd Brunner (Yale University Press; Illustrated; 258 pages; $25). Order it at your local bookstore.

Arthur Schwerdt, a certified appraiser, is the author of “The Antique Story Book: Finding the Real Value of Old Things,”€ and co-owner of The August Farmhouse Antiques on Route 9 in Swainton.