I love Babar, but somehow I had never come across this incredibly bizarre Christmas book until this week! Let me just skip to the best part, in which we see a cross-section of Father Christmas’ UNDERGROUND LAIR. Did you know that he lives in a cave in Bohemia?
And that his home is protected to violent, snowball-chucking dwarfs? So, that’s weird, but the strangest thing about this story to me is Babar’s meandering quest to find Father Christmas. Along the way, the narrator provides unnnecessary but somehow comforting detail about Babar’s hotel room and digresses about the pleasures of washing up after a long journey. He then mistakes a homeless guy for Father Christmas… …and spends several pages discussing dead languages with a “famous professor.”
Apparently in 1940, the French did not condescend to children by over-simplifying even life’s imaginary adventures!