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SANTA and snowmen still reign supreme on Christmas cards. But they have two
new challengers: the penguin and the polar bear. A decade or so ago, a
zoologically minded card buyer would probably have been forced to settle for a
robin or a dove, or perhaps opt for a camel or donkey. Wild denizens of the
frozen polar regions have only recently been adopted as icons of Yuletide in the
industrialised Western world.

Wrapped in scarves and woolly hats, Christmas penguins ice-skate, go sledging
or fish for gifts at ice holes. They decorate Christmas trees, hang out with
Santa and the snowmen. This season, one pair of penguins is even pictured
beak-to-beak under the mistletoe outside an igloo tastefully bedecked with a
sprig of holly. Polar bears, similarly attired, drive cars loaded with presents,
or spend their time fraternising with robins, gazing at stars or playing with
snowflakes.

鈥淭hey鈥檝e become much more popular in the last two or three years,鈥� says
Louise Pallister, product manager of Card Connection in Farnham, Surrey. Amanda
Ferguson of Hallmark Cards UK points out that these newer 鈥渃ute鈥� images are
proving increasingly appealing, particularly with the younger consumer. Twee
snow-clad village scenes are on the way out, agrees Pallister. 鈥淢otifs鈥� with a
contemporary design feel are in. But what is this ritual display of penguins and
polar bears all about? Why in the world put these animals on seasonal greetings
cards?

Little people in suits

Penguins make people smile, says penguin-fanatic Peter Barham, a materials
scientist from the University of Bristol. 鈥淭hey stand up and walk, they look
like little people in suits.鈥� And perhaps we鈥檙e especially drawn to animals
outfitted in contrasting black and white. Who knows, some atavistic attraction
to formal dinner attire could explain why giant pandas, zebras and even killer
whales are more popular than their drab-coloured relations. Add to that a
seasonal nostalgia for snow and ice鈥攚hich seem to be increasingly rare at
Christmas as global warming bites鈥攁nd you begin to see why the penguin has
been commandeered as a symbol of winter solstice celebrations.

So our seasonal love affair with these sexless, benign creatures is
understandable. More puzzling, however, is the parallel rise of polar bears as a
symbol of Christmas. Why adopt a fearsome predator鈥攐ne quite capable of
tearing apart a human鈥攁s a token of festive fun? Strange as it may seem,
the focus groups convened by leading card manufacturers consistently give polar
bears the thumbs up. Perhaps it鈥檚 because, as one long-running television and
cinema advertisement for Coca-Cola implies, polar bears are cool.

But the really smart cards don鈥檛 make you choose between penguins and polar
bears: they portray them together. The fact that in reality they are poles
apart鈥攚ith penguins confined to the southern oceans and polar bears to the
north鈥攕eems not to have filtered through to the majority of the population
in North America and Europe. 鈥淲e do occasionally get some bright spark ringing
up and pointing out they don鈥檛 occur together,鈥� says Pallister. But most people
don鈥檛 notice the artistic licence, she suspects. 鈥淭he ignorance of some zoo
visitors beggars belief,鈥� says Barham, who can鈥檛 help overhearing the comments
people make outside penguin enclosures. 鈥淢ost people associate penguins with
ice, and so assume they live at both poles.鈥� Probably the old joke about the
British chocolate biscuit doesn鈥檛 help: 鈥淲hy don鈥檛 polar bears eat Penguins?
They can鈥檛 get the wrappers off.鈥�

Even the World Wide Fund for Nature is selling a Christmas and New Year card
that shows penguins and polar bears in peaceful coexistence. The WWF cartoon
shows an igloo shaped like the Millennium Dome, the controversial new exhibition
centre in London. Snaking into the ice dome is a long queue of penguins, all
with bobble hats and scarves. Behind them, at the end of the queue, stand two
similarly attired polar bears. The smaller bear looks happily towards the dome,
but the bigger one seems dubious. Is it the size of the queue, the look of the
dome, or the sight of all those penguins that he finds disquieting? It鈥檚 a
mystery, not least because zoologists agree that if polar bears really did ever
meet penguins, they would make a meal out of them.

鈥淚f polar bears were introduced to Antarctica, penguins could get wiped out,鈥�
says Caroline Pond, a zoologist at the Open University in Milton Keynes and an
expert on polar bears. After all, Arctic birds breed only on sheer cliffs, which
is surely an adaptation to the predatory prowess of polar bears and Arctic
foxes. If polar bears lived with penguins 鈥渢he ground-nesting nonsense of
penguins would just not be practical鈥�, she says. 鈥淭he bears would have eaten
them all.鈥�

Luckily for penguins, a meeting is unlikely. Fossil remains show that
penguins evolved in the southern oceans from flying ancestors some 25 million
years ago during the Miocene, and have never spread north of the
equator鈥攁lthough a few penguins on the Galapagos Islands sometimes nest a
few metres into the northern hemisphere. The ultimate barrier is probably
thermal: penguins find tropical waters just too hot to swim through. In
captivity, most species cannot tolerate even the summer heat of Chicago or New
York, let alone more southerly climes.

Polar bears, on the other hand, evolved in Europe from brown bears relatively
recently鈥攄uring the Pleistocene ice age, about the time when waves of
humans began to invade Europe from Africa around 40 000 years ago, says Pond. As
the ice retreated, polar bears moved further north and became committed
carnivores. Humans, by contrast, gave up killing mammoths and went back to
largely vegetarian fare. And while humans spread across the globe, polar bears
stayed put in the icy north. Travelling to Antarctica was out of the
question.

In fact, no land mammal has ever made it to Antarctica under its own steam.
Now even the polar explorers鈥� friend, the huskies of dog-sled fame, are banned
for fear they might wreak havoc on the native fauna if they escaped. The mammals
that find a home in the Arctic鈥攖he bears, foxes, lemmings, hares, caribou
and more鈥攁re all absent from the South Pole. Until this century, even
humans failed to colonise that forbidding continent. Pingu鈥攖he children鈥檚
penguin character鈥攎ay live in an igloo, but in real life this is the home
of the Inuit people of the northern polar regions.

No mammals here

The utter isolation of the Antarctic continent and its surrounding islands,
ring-fenced by fierce frozen currents, seems to explain its natural status as a
mammal-free zone. Even penguins find it hard going, and only two of the world鈥檚
17 species actually breed on the Antarctic continent: the middle-sized
Ad茅lie penguins, that wisely spend the winter well out to sea off the
pack-ice, and the large emperors, that incredibly hatch their eggs in the bleak
Antarctic winter. No zoo in Europe has attempted to replicate the freezing
conditions that emperors need, and the animals are kept in captivity only in
Japan, at the Port of Nagoya Aquarium, and at SeaWorld in San Diego in the US.
Most penguins, however, are more amenable to human-friendly climes. They are
temperate creatures, breeding on warmish islands off South Africa, South America
and New Zealand. Penguins on frozen ice are the exception.

But if we accept that polar bears and penguins could never naturally bump
into each other, what would happen if people acted as matchmaker? Leading
British supermarket chain Tesco is selling a card that portrays that very
experiment. Santa is shown rowing a small boat filled with presents towards an
icy promontory on which three smiling polar bears are waiting. In the bows of
the boat stands a little penguin, flipper outstretched in greeting. The caption
reads: 鈥淪anta鈥檚 special delivery to the North Pole.鈥�

In 1936, Norwegian Carl Schoyen anticipated the Tesco Santa鈥檚 mission. For
reasons that remain obscure, Schoyen introduced nine king penguins to northern
Norway, with the blessing of Norway鈥檚 National Federation for the Protection of
Nature. Two years later he also released a few macaroni and Magellanic penguins.
The results were not happy. One moulting king was put down by a woman who
thought it was ill, while another was dispatched having been mistaken for a
troll. A fisherman dragged up a third on his fishing hooks. The last penguin in
Norway seems to have died in 1954, leaving no issue.

No one knows whether any of Schoyen鈥檚 penguins met its end as a polar bear鈥檚
snack. But in the benevolent world of the Tesco card, such an outcome is
unthinkable. Like the other polar bears co-opted as symbols of Christmas cheer
they have undergone cosmetic surgery. Gone is the powerful pointed snout, and in
its place are rounded cub-like features. While penguins may naturally appear
sexless, harmless and toy-like, polar bears on Christmas cards are on their way
to becoming white teddy bears. Despite the real animals鈥� yellowish fur and
overwhelming body odour, notes Pond, they are portrayed as 鈥渃lean and pure,
virgin white鈥�. Polar bears seem to symbolise a 鈥淲hite Christmas鈥�.

What鈥檚 going on here? Why transform one of the world鈥檚 biggest and fiercest
animals into a silly stuffed toy? Perhaps because at heart we鈥檙e scared witless.
To gain control over the animal kingdom, we consistently juvenilise our fantasy
animals, says American vet and anthropologist Elizabeth Lawrence. We envelope
them in a cosy and patronising world鈥攐ne in which they really would
welcome wearing our snow hats and scarves鈥攖o feed our own sense of power
over nature. Whereas traditional Inuit hunters celebrated their awesome prey,
once slain, as a noble visitor, the contemporary Western mentality turns the
beasts into perpetual babies that can be safely stuck on a Christmas card to
give just a whiff of raw animal magic on ice.

Of all the cartoon images marketed at Christmas, only Raymond Briggs鈥檚
children鈥檚 story and video, The Bear, grants its subject something like
its rightful status. In his tale, the polar bear hero is a refugee, a powerful
(and preternaturally large) animal out of place, who is magically freed from a
zoo and reunited with his long-lost relatives at the North Pole. As for the rest
of the items on the shelf, a Real Animal Campaign could be on the cards.

So throw off your wrappers, penguins everywhere, and sharpen your gnashers,
you polar bears. You鈥檒l need all the guile you can muster to get the better of
the image makers at Christmas.