We’ll be back for sure, and hopefully not before too much longer. Until then, thank you for understanding.

Happy Thanksgiving from Brer-Rabbit.com! I hope everybody is enjoying this day, regardless if you’re celebrating it or not (I realize not everybody is from the USA. ). I associate Brer Rabbit with Thanksgiving often for a few reasons. The first being that I got the Brer Rabbit doll that turned out to be the Woody to my Andy as a child during a trip to Disneyland a few weeks before the Thanksgiving of 1995. The second reason being how, that very same November, I walked into a Barnes & Noble for the first time in my life, and immediately found a Brer Rabbit book in the Children Section with beautiful illustrations.

Also, now that I think about it, I rode Splash Mountain quite a few times two days before Thanksgiving last year. Always go on that ride before the park closes, folks – they let you ride over and over without getting off.

As for Brer Rabbit, I think it’s pretty safe to say he would be thankful for the brain he was blessed with… and to be surrounded by some rather gullible neighbors.

Site Related

I know, I know – I’m sorry the updates here are few and far between. But I have not forgotten. Never! But the holiday season, like always, is a busy one in a lot of ways. Especially when you consider that I have also been participating in NaNoWriMo this year (almost done!). But behind the scenes, I have been working on concepts for this site that I’m planning on executing before the end of the month.

The main thing to know is that I am planning on reorganizing it a bit. It will still mainly be the same, but I’m going to move things around a bit. I also am planning on a few festive Brer Rabbit related things for the Christmas season — including the site’s very first review of Brer Rabbit related media! I’m really looking forward to it, and I hope you are too.

Black Friday

Believe it or not, even Brer-Rabbit.com has a couple of deals to offer for the Black Friday/Cyber Monday craze.

If you have at all been considering starting up a website, or changing hosts, now is the time to do it. The company I use to host this site, Host Gator, is offering some amazing deals for hosting packages tomorrow. I have always been extremely happy using them as my host. If I have ever had any downtime, I have never been aware of it, it’s that brief. Their customer service is also wonderful – any problems I have ever had has been dealt with immediately by them, and they have always been very helpful. Their rates are also very price efficient, especially considering the deals they will be offering tomorrow. It would take a lot to convince me to leave them, and I cannot recommend them enough.

Anyways, on to the deals!

50% OFF EVERYTHING From 12:00AM CST – 5AM CST

80% OFF EVERYTHING From 5AM – 9AM CST WHILE SUPPLIES LAST (first come, first receive; so definitely don’t miss out!)

From 9AM – 11:59PM CST OR after 80% OFF accounts have sold out, they will continue to offer 50% OFF EVERYTHING

If you decide to purchase a hosting plan through Host Gator, I do get a small commission off every sale I send through here – which means you would be helping to support the continuation of this site. So please consider it! But be sure to use one of the links I’ve provided, or else I won’t receive anything.

Our Store also should be offering some Black Friday prices on the items in it. I, personally, can’t think of a better gift to give than that of Brer Rabbit, myself.

That’s all she wrote. Happy Thanksgiving!!

I thought it only made sense to offer a place where people could purchase these stories for their own. Eventually I plan on publishing my own version on here, but until then these should more than fill the void. Besides, you can never go wrong with the original.

So be sure to head over to the store and see if anything interests you!

Hopefully in the coming days  I will be able to work on getting my collection page up. I’ve begun taking pictures, but still have plenty more to go. I’m going to try to at least get some of it up before my move, but we’ll see.

In the meantime, don’t forget about the new WDCC Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox figurine coming out this month!

I was thinking about the figures I mentioned in my last post, when I realized that this wasn’t the first time they had featured Brer Rabbit and his, um, “friends” in their line up. The last time was in 1995-1996, for the 50th anniversary of Song of the South.

They used to have this available at a store at the local mall when I was a kid. Every time I would go to the mall, I would always spend a few moments drooling over it. Dreaming that one day I might be able to get it.

And it still hasn’t happened. Ah, well. (Though I did get the Brer Rabbit watch for sale at the Disney Store at the time.) It’s still on eBay quite a bit, so one day I’m sure I’ll be able to make my dreams come true. Brer Fox and Brer Bear were also available, I remember, but you can probably guess I’ve never been quite as interested in them. Though I won’t deny I still get excited whenever I spot them anywhere. A Brer character is a Brer character.

Anyways, it’s nice to see Disney still pays attention to these characters once in a while. Both pieces seem beautiful.

I would love feedback, if you don’t mind. You can leave comments by clicking the little circle button at the bottom of this and all posts. The one that has the voice cloud on it. I’m not sure it’s clear that’s what that does, so I think I’m going to look into a way to rework that. But you can let me know if it is!

You can also e-mail me, or even contact me on our Twitter if you’d like. I’m eager to hear back from you.

In the middle of the 1900‘s, another visionary known as Walt Disney would again introduce Brer Rabbit and his woodland critters to the public via another medium: the silver screen.

Both men helped to immortalize the folklore of the old plantations through the mediums which were hot during their time; Harris with books, and Disney through motion picture. Today technology has advanced probably beyond anything either men ever could have imagined, but unfortunately, the Brer Rabbit stories have all but slipped from the public conscience.

These days, the stories often face criticism, accused of racism and portraying the Old South in too romantic of a light. Disney’s Song of the South hasn’t seen the light of day on American shores since the mid-eighties, and disappeared from international shelves around the turn of this century. Harris, who was contemporaries and good friends with Mark Twain, is a name many students today haven’t even heard of. It’s tragic how Brer Rabbit is disappearing, despite the impact he has had on society — in ways you may not even have realized.

In the early Nineties, my older sister dragged me kicking and screaming on Splash Mountain for the first time. It was the beginning of a beautiful relationship, as the cliche goes. We’re lucky the popular attraction is around, as it remains perhaps the only exposure to Brer Rabbit many kids today will ever have. And I’m living proof it can leave them curious for more.

It’s my hope that I can utilize the hot medium of today in much the same fashion Joel Chandler Harris and Walt Disney did before me to preserve these legends. Even close to twenty years after first discovering Brer Rabbit, he and his tales still never fail to make me happy. My goal is for this site to become the ultimate resource for all things Brer Rabbit: from analysis of stories, to reviews of movies, to humorous anecdotes,  and everything in between.