Papa Q. Bear is a character from the Berenstain Bears children's storybooks, created by Stan and Jan Berenstain. As his name suggests, he is the patriarch of the Bear family who lives in a tree house in Bear Country. He works as a woodcarver who builds and sells furniture out of wood.
Appearances in Christmas specials[]
Papa has the central role in the franchise's lone animated Christmas special, The Berenstain Bears' Christmas Tree. After he catches a giant salmon for the family's Christmas dinner, Papa and his family get out their Christmas tree decorations, despite that they do not even have a tree to put them on and it's already Christmas Eve. Joined by his cubs, Papa goes out to get a tree, but rather than take Mama's advice of buying one from Grizzly Gus' lot, he insists on taking out his axe and going out into the wild to find one. Throughout the special, he obsessively boasts that he will find a perfect tree no matter how long it takes, all the while his eyes keep flashing in a tree shape. This, of course, proves to be more trouble than it's worth, as not only does it start snowing hard during this trek, but the first two trees he finds are both inhabited by numerous animals who obviously do not want him forcing them out of their homes.
When he finds a third tree in the mountains, Papa takes a good look at it before he actually does anything to it. Inside the tree, he sees a family of birds, resembling his own family, who are perfectly happy with only the twig they have for a tree. Although the birds are first startled when they see Papa outside their house, they realize he doesn't really intend to harm them and wish him merry Christmas, leading Papa to realize he's been wrong about obsessing over finding a perfect tree. After telling his cubs that he's learned a lesson, Papa uses his axe to make some skis so he and the cubs can ski down the mountain and go buy one of Gus' trees. Unfortunately, when they make it back down, they find that Gus' tree is now empty, but they then learn that, in return for Papa sparing the birds' home, all the animals decorated the Bear family's house for them.
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