Hello & welcome back to A Look at Disney and it's Christmas. Yay. And that means a month of Christmas reviews starting this week with 4 Christmas stories reviews. As you may recall in the past past, I have reviewed Christmas stories starring Disney characters such as Ariel's Christmas Under The Sea or last year, Mater Saves Christmas. This year, we are going to look at one of the Disney Christmas Storybook Collections. A children's book that contains 4 Christmas stories (However, we will only be looking at three). starring Disney and Pixar characters and the first one takes us to the land of Corona as we see what Rapunzel's first Christmas with Flynn Rider was like as we look at Ghosts of Christmas Past.
The Plot
It's Christmastime in the kingdom and everyone is excited and happy to celebrate the joyous holiday. All but one person that is. Rapunzel doesn't like Christmas because she doesn't understand what it is as she never celebrated it with Mother Gothel and instead Gothel made her fear the holiday.
Telling her things such as St. Nicolas kidnapped children and that left Rapunzel up in fear on Christmas Eve that someone would take her away or that presents would explode in her face and that they had to put charms on trees to keep away the angry elf that would kidnap children. After hearing this, Flynn took it upon himself to teach his princess, what Christmas is truly like and that Christmas isn't something to be scared of. So, he took Rapunzel around the kingdom to learn that caroling is not something such as spooky noises that Mother Gothel had taught Rapunzel or that charms she had thought were to keep the angry elf out were actually ornaments. And Rapunzel even received a present from one of her younger subjects that was a crown made out of evergreen. And afterwards, Flynn took Rapunzel back to the castle as he taught her what St. Nicolas was really like and that he was a jolly fellow that children waited up for in anticipation.
And after learning of what Christmas is really about, Rapunzel embraces the holiday with baking and learning all the songs and wrapping presents for all of her family including Pascal and the story ends with Rapunzel and her family having a party with her parents happy to be spending the holiday with their daughter and the notion that Rapunzel and Flynn had a great Christmas and there will be many more to come.
All in all, this was a cute story and I was happy to start out with a Tangled story in this book and it was quite an enjoyable read and I felt bad for Rapunzel in the beginning because no one should ever be afraid of Christmas and that builds upon Mother Gothel instilling fear into Rapunzel of the outside world and that the only thing that Rapunzel could trust in her life was Mother Gothel. Jeeze, even in death, Gothel is still a very loathsome character.
Characters
There are only two characters that we really need to focus on here. So, I won't be breaking it down any further.
Rapunzel
I liked Rapunzel's journey in the story of learning what Christmas actually is and coming to love it and embracing all the traditions of it. It's a long step from when she was with Mother Gothel as the story showed us.
And I like that the story said it happened over weeks, Sure Rapunzel first got intrigued by Christmas after learning what it really was from Flynn and over the weeks leading up to Christmas, she came to love the holiday. It was nice to see a story touch upon the fear that Mother Gothel had instilled in Rapunzel and watch Rapunzel overcome that and learn the truth of the joyous holiday.
Flynn
I also really liked Flynn in this story as you could see that he really enjoyed showing Rapunzel what Christmas is really like and that there is no need to be scared of it and as he said, this felt like his first real Christmas because even though, he celebrated the holiday at the orphanage, he didn't have a family to celebrate with. Well, that's changed.
My Final Thoughts
All in all, this was a cute little story that I greatly enjoyed and tackled something that I don't often see in stories like these, people being afraid of Christmas and overcoming their fear of the holiday and learning that it's a for a lack of a better word, safe holiday. And in many ways, Rapunzel's fear of Santa Claus is very real as I've known many children that were scared of Santa and this story seemed to build upon that and asked what would it be like for someone that was afraid of Christmas altogether. And I find that this story explores that question rather well. Join me tomorrow as we continue our look at the stories from the Disney Christmas Storybook Collection as we head to the arcade to....
Wreck The Halls
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