Winnie the Pooh turns 100 and remains a symbol of hope for navigating a complicated world

I don’t know about you but I am taking Winnie the Pooh, the beloved teddy bear from British writer A.A. Milne’s stories, as my role model into the new year. Let me give you my top three reasons behind this decision.

Number One: there is no pressure to make a success of your life if you follow in Pooh’s footsteps. You don’t have to dazzle anyone online, or in the real world. Pooh doesn’t need to impress the world, post his #OOTD on Instagram, since he goes around pantless, and doesn’t have exotic taste in food. All he wants is a pot of “hunny” or a bit of condensed milk, and he’s happy. He’s also incredibly lucky to have friends, who are always there for him. “Pooh hasn’t much Brain, but he never comes to any harm,” as his best friend Piglet says. “He does silly things and they turn out right.”

Number Two: Pooh is the first one to admit his shortcomings. “I am a Bear of Very Little Brain,” he keeps telling the reader with disarming candour. He is humble, always ready to own his mistakes. Maybe that is why Christopher Robin, the little boy he belongs to, considers Pooh to be “the best bear in all the world.”

Number Three: there is no space for hustle in Pooh’s world. When he wakes up in the morning, the first thought that comes to his mind is: “What’s for breakfast?” Which, as Pooh tells Piglet, is not all that different from the question that pops up in his dear friend’s head at the start of the day: “I wonder what’s going to happen exciting today?”

I could go on and on, but let me just remind you that for all his lack of ambition and intellect, Pooh hits a big milestone this year. While he made his first appearance in a poem called Teddy Bear by Milne in Punch magazine in 1924, it was in 1926, exactly one hundred years ago, that the first book about his adventures was published.

A century later, I’m not sure if Pooh’s stories are still read to and by children. But I know enough adults like myself—fans of Milne’s books, who grew up with teddy bears of their own and probably still have them around—who still take keen delight in the stories that the writer conjured up for his young son, Christopher Robin.

The origin story of Pooh bear is an endearing mishmash of fiction and reality. Christopher Robin, who was born in 1920, did get a teddy bear for his first birthday, who he called Edward. He was rechristened Pooh eventually, inspired by the name of a swan which belonged to a friend. “Winnie” was borrowed from a Canadian black bear called Winnipeg, who was a resident of the London Zoo. Finally, when Ernest B. Shepard was commissioned to illustrate the stories, he decided to model Pooh after a teddy owned by his son. Sweet as these back stories are, the magic of Pooh and his friends—Piglet, Rabbit, Kanga, Roo, Eeyore, Tigger—was ultimately wrought by Milne’s charming pen.

Re-reading these classic stories as a 40-something, feeling more like grumpy old Eeyore these days than curious Piglet, I felt emotions that my five-year-old self had no inkling of as I first read Winnie the Pooh, gifted to me by my favourite aunt. For a start, it was sobering to find out that the stories were written in the aftermath of World War I by a veteran, who had fought at the front, in the Battle of the Somme, no less. Milne, a student of mathematics, was also a keen cricketer, who counted J.M. Barrie, P.G. Wodehouse and Arthur Conan Doyle among his friends.

In the aftermath of the war, Milne suffered from what would now most likely be diagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder. He wrote crime fiction, poetry as well as essays, but was best loved for his poems and stories for children, filled with warmth, sweetness and light.

Milne’s only son, Christopher Robin, was brought up by his beloved nanny, Olive Rand Brockwell, or Nou, as the little boy called her. Years later, the adult Christopher Robin would remember Nou with much affection in his memoirs, The Enchanted Places, though he became estranged from both his parents.

Such was the extent of the rancour that he refused to meet his mother in the last 15 years of her life and declined to be at her deathbed. If the Pooh stories were Milne’s path to his young son’s heart, the books seemed to have had the opposite effect on their relationship. As the Pooh books became increasingly popular, throughout his school and college years, Christopher Robin claimed to have been cruelly bullied by his peers because his father’s stories had thrust his private life into the public domain. He resented the intrusion so much that he blamed Milne for exploiting his childhood and did not want any part of the royalties from the books.

In a sad irony, millions of children around the world grew up loving these very same stories, which had caused Christopher Robin so much unhappiness. Pooh and his friends gave young readers their first glimpse into empathy, fellowship and adventures that lie hidden in plain sight. These creatures showed us that it was alright to play silly pranks on your friends, sometimes get into trouble, and that there was always a new day for us to make a fresh start from.

To this day, I cannot pick up a pencil without being reminded of the pencil case that Christopher Robin gifts Pooh for showing an unexpected act of courage. It had pencils with B, HB and BB marked on them. As Pooh interprets it, B meant Bear, HB stood for Helping Bear, and BB was for Brave Bear.

In my childhood, I had loved Aesop’s Fables for the clever, talking animals that featured in them, who solved knotty problems, often with a mix of wile and deceit. As a grown-up, I enjoyed George Orwell’s Animal Farm for the wry, political subtext that each creature carried with it. But Pooh, in contrast, exuded pure joy and innocence. He is a character like none I know—loyal, loving, kind, wise, and always scrupulously polite.

Such is his appeal that American writer Benjamin Hoff used Pooh and his friends to explain Taoism in his best-selling books, The Tao of Pooh (1982) and The Te of Piglet (1992). The bear has also run into unforeseen troubles. For instance, he is banned in China for his supposed resemblance to President Xi Jinping. Pooh has also been massively monetised as a mascot and Disney movie star. This commercialisation of what was once a private memento of his childhood also left Christopher Robin bereft and bitter.

Be that as it may, the rest of the world can only be grateful to Milne for sharing Pooh and his adventures, which he had once made up to amuse his little boy. As he steps into his hundredth year, Pooh is no longer a just teddy bear, a figment of childish fantasy, but a symbol of hope and goodness in a world, where staying grounded, being connected to others, and showing compassion are some of the toughest challenges for us all.

Perhaps it’s time for you to revisit Winnie the Pooh too, and embrace the new year with the right intentions.