Celebrate The Holidays With Pooh & Friends In The Hundred Acre Woods
National Winnie the Pooh Day on January 18
Let's celebrate your favorite honey-smacking bear; along with his friends on this day and all thru the year. * Don't forget about those honey-smackin treats for your family while watching some of these specials.
The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh episodic show and the slew of holiday-themed Pooh movies outlined below are guaranteed to put you in a holiday mood — for fun and even for food!
Groundhog Day
“Ground Piglet Day,” Season One, Episode Twenty-Five of the show endows Piglet with the spotlight. Piglet’s behavior acts as the episode’s thematic catalyst during the February 2nd holiday setting episode. Piglet is forced to take the groundhog role of the holiday, so the other animals know whether his shadow indicates the coming of Spring. Piglet’s personality trait of fearing his friends’ disapproval and a delighted smile hidden beneath a groundhog-inspired mask in the segment illuminate a suburb representation of Piglet’s character. There’s a hilarious twist during the midpoint of the episode that might make “Ground Piglet Day” an appropriate Thanksgiving seasonal viewing as well.
Groundhog Day isn’t necessarily a day that garners much notoriety — unless you live in the city of Punxsutawney and have a huge celebration bash every year.
Valentine’s Day
Valentine’s Day is a day spent with a loved one — or loved ones, as joyously represented in Season Two, Episode One of New Adventures, “Un-Valentine’s Day.” Feeling agitated over the haunting memories of the prior’s years’ Valentine’s Day card fiasco, Rabbit enacts a ban on any card exchange for the holiday. Unfortunately for Rabbit, Pooh Bear, implicitly responsible for the overwhelming amount of Valentine’s Day cards that flooded the Hundred Acre Wood last year, begins the card-gifting cycle anew after finding an unmarked card on his doorstep. This episode wholly embraces whimsy, sparkling red and white colors and the atmosphere of love that couples with Valentine’s Day. The dialogue between Pooh and Piglet will bring you to tears. Additionally, Pooh cleverly masquerades as a mailbox, and the illustrated farce is as charming as it sounds.
Another Pooh Valentine’s Day feature, 1999 special, Winnie the Pooh: A Valentine For You, is only available to stream through a rental purchase. The holiday sentiment remains, but the limited availability of the twenty-two-minute special may deter prospective viewers. Thankfully, your Disney+ subscription grants you easy access to streaming the tear-jerking Valentine’s Day episode of “New Adventures” on February 14th instead.
St. Patrick’s Day
As a disclaimer, the “New Adventures” episode, “Luck Amok,” doesn’t technically mention St. Patrick’s Day. Because Season One, Episode Fifteen thematically revolves around luck, features four-leaf clovers, and displays lush, green-colored backgrounds, the story can easily reproduce the child-reminiscent understanding of St. Patrick’s Day. Tigger accidentally breaks Rabbit’s mirror, and Rabbit spitefully tells Tigger that he will be cursed with bad luck for seven years. The bad luck trope gets passed around from character to character, and Pooh and Piglet exchange outfits — producing the iconic picture above — in an attempt to confuse the bad luck! Usual Pooh shenanigans are paired with especially memorable imagery, making this a must-watch episode on the March 17th holiday.
April Fool’s Day
It’s not surprising that the “New Adventures” writers took advantage of the single most obvious Pooh pun in entitling the second segment of Season Three, Episode Six, “April Pooh.” Further, the entirety of the ten-minute short is teeming with affability, as each character finds themselves at the end of a prank by an unknown prankster. A highlight of this episode is that the animators took the time to design humorous costumes and props to dress Pooh and his friends. The Hundred Acre Wood animals search for the “April Fool” with heartwarming results. Honestly, you’d be hard pressed to find a more jovial April Fool’s themed episode to watch on the first day of April.
Easter
Springtime With Roo (2004) is a quintessential film to watch during Easter week for religious and non-religious people alike. This movie maintains a high-spirited energy throughout, bursting with a peppy Music Man-esque soundtrack including peppy songs like “Easter Day With You” and “The Way It Must Be Done.” Although the movie is marketed as Roo-centralized, older viewers will quickly realize that Rabbit’s crotchety, cantankerous behavior begins to resemble that of the Charles Dickens classic Scrooge, Ebenezer Scrooge. Thus, the spotlight re-centers from Roo wanting to celebrate his second Easter toward Rabbit’s dismissal of the holiday altogether in place of spring cleaning.
You won’t want to miss this spectacularly colored Easter retelling of A Christmas Carol. A rare, satisfied Eeyore will delight viewers as he brandishes his fluffy bunny ears to get into the Easter-egg-hunting spirit. Surprisingly, Tigger takes on a parental role with Roo and a guiding hand for Rabbit that adds emotional complexity to his character. Pooh also engages in a song and dance about his upcoming sneeze that will make you want to dance along with the fluffy bear.
Halloween
If you grew up in the 2000s, you’ve probably seen the 2005 animated film Pooh’s Heffalump Halloween Movie. A sequel to Pooh’s Heffalump Movie, this direct-to-video movie played on a constant loop on the Disney Channel during October in the 2000s. In retrospect, it’s far from the best Pooh movie. Regardless, this film deserves a certain amount of respect because it features long-time voice actor John Fiedler’s last performance as Piglet. Brave kids won’t be able to resist the allure of the films’ trick-or-treat Halloween night setting and stakes of Pooh-stealing goblins.
Tigger scares everyone — as usual — with the threat of a “Gobloon” that slinks from the shadows every Halloween to capture trick-or-treaters. Roo and Lumpy, the good-hearted purple elephant that made his debut in Pooh’s Heffalump Movie, endeavor on an adventure to capture the ill-wishing Gobloon. The character-appropriate Halloween costume attire for each Pooh character in the film speaks to the creative ingenuity of the artistic team. Whether the movie is objectively “good” — and whether the creepiness of some images will give your child nightmares — Pooh’s Heffalump Movie is worth the rental fee on Halloween, solely for the costuming designs. Who doesn’t want to see Pooh dressed up as a honey pot?
Your wallet should fear not, for several episodes of the “New Adventures” series can satisfy your — or your children’s — itch for wholesomely spooky Winnie the Pooh Halloween content. Season Two, Episode Two, “The Monster Frankenpooh,” is not only a fan-favorite segment, but the artistic freedom of scenery, costumes, and character modifications monstrously heighten visual satisfaction. Piglet, Rabbit, Tigger, and Gopher all gather around on a dark night to frighten one another with scary stories. Surprisingly, Piglet proves his eerie storytelling chops by regaling his friends with a loose retelling of the Frankenstein horror story.
Jagged castle designs complement the light terror atmosphere in the tale. A thunderstorm bellows overhead on an exterior castle shot as the camera pans inside to reveal a scientist who looks nearly identical to Piglet — and wears an adorable Piglet-sized lab coat. When the glorious creation on the table is revealed, Tigger interjects in the story and comically increases the size of the “horrifying” monster, “Frankenpooh.” The stellar sound effects, breaking the fourth wall, and emphatic voice acting enhance the story’s drama. In addition, you can round off your Pooh-o-ween night with a five-minute short of Piglet running around like a ghost and terrorizing his friends in Season One, Episode Fourteen, “Things That Go Piglet in the Night.”
Thanksgiving Day
Winnie the Pooh: Seasons of Giving was marketed as a full-length animated special but essentially consists of a three-short amalgamation. Two of the shorts included, “Groundpiglet Day” and “Find Her, Keep Her,” are found in Season One of “New Adventures.” Sandwiched in between the shorts is the 1998 made-for-television special, A Winnie the Pooh Thanksgiving. The short fully caters to its Thanksgiving theme, featuring the preparation for a true Thanksgiving feast with Christopher Robin and his stuffed friends. Themes of togetherness, thankfulness, and co-operation enliven the heartwarming innocence of a childhood Thanksgiving. Spectacular art, dazzling colorwork, and facial expressiveness proves distinctive in comparison to other television Pooh specials.
Unfortunately, you’ll only be able to watch the special while scarfing down your own Thanksgiving feast by renting the entire Seasons of Giving film. Since the other two shorts are watchable on Disney+, the $3.99 rental price makes the twenty-two minutes of A Winnie the Pooh Thanksgiving only truly worth the money if you have to see this Primetime Emmy nominated feature.
Christmas And New Year’s Day
As the crew aids Pooh in his Christmas tree decorations, Rabbit tells Roo a flashback Christmas story that segues into a showing of the Winnie the Pooh and Christmas Too special. Many Christmas tunes are sung by the endearing voice actors, and the movie demonstrates the captivating joy of the holiday spirit. Pooh and Piglet exchange the sweetest lines of friendship with one another that reminds viewers to focus on the gift of companionship during the holiday. In the New Year’s portion of the movie, preparations for New Year’s go awry, and the animals decide to switch up their personalities in a misguided attempt to appease an angered rabbit. A Very Merry Pooh Year is special, poignant, musical, and an absolute comfort movie to turn on during the holidays.
A Very Merry Pooh Year (2002) is the ultimate, warm-and-fuzzy, feel-good holiday movie. Like The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977), the film pieces together a previous Pooh holiday special, Winnie the Pooh and Christmas Too, with bonus scenes to cohesively tie it together with an additional New Year’s featurette called Happy Pooh Year. The film begins on Christmas Eve, where a befuddled Winnie the Pooh struggles to set up his Christmas tree. After a mishap, Pooh accidentally breaks the shelf where he was hiding a gift for his best friend, Piglet. While his friends outside beg Pooh to let them in his home, Pooh scrambles to re-hide the gift, leading to his later forgetfulness about the present at all.
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