“The Nightmare Before Christmas” is a movie that was released on October 29, 1993. It’s a movie about a main character named Jack Skellington. He has become bored with how redundant Halloween has become. It has lost its magic for him. Once the Halloween celebration is coming to an end, Jack Skellington slips away, reflecting on past scares and Halloweens. On his walk, he comes upon a forest and becomes curious about a circle of trees with holiday symbols on them. One of the symbols captures his attention, a decorated tree that leads to Christmas land.
As he explores this new land he becomes excited with all things that are surrounding him. It is fresh and new. Jack decides that he is going to bring back this excitement and newness to Halloween town. This year, he decides that he is going to control Christmas. Jack struggled to explain the joy he experienced at Christmas Land and his townspeople were unable to comprehend what he was explaining. Because of this confusion, the two holidays got merged and to Jack’s surprise, it ended in disaster until Santa Claus took over. The movie ends with Santa covering Halloween town with snow, to which the creatures are greeted with joy and curiosity. Jack once again reflects and finds joy once again with Halloween.
These movies became what some would call a cult classic. Disneyland took the movie a step further and took its yearly haunted house and decorated it to be Nightmare Before Christmas themed, which starts in October and goes through the end of December.
“The Nightmare Before Christmas” has always had the debate if it’s more of a Christmas or Halloween movie surrounding it. The answer to that is it’s simply both. You can enjoy the movie during the Halloween season and also the Christmas season.
The movie expresses both Halloween and Christmas-related ideas. Jack is obviously from Halloween town where they scare children with toys and they do fun performances. For example, in the beginning of the movie, Jack is dressed as a scarecrow, then he jumps into the green, glowing water fountain which removes Jack’s scarecrow costume and reveals himself as the Halloween king he is. Though the movie does also add Christmas elements, Jack and the other creatures of Halloween town put their little twist on Christmas for that year.
The movie shows the elves that make gifts, snowmen, and anything Christmas. Jack was very interested in this new land considering that his land is full of things you’d see in nightmares. Christmas land, however, is filled with elves having fun and being joyful. The movie adds anything Christmas-themed on screen they can while Jack is singing about how he’s confused by everything, especially the snow. In Halloween town there were also very dull colors, so seeing all these vibrant colors was already super new and interesting for him.
Instead of gifts like innocent toys, they put big orange snakes that eat their Christmas trees, wreaths that try to attack the kids, and an evil duck on wheels that chases the kids.
Though the creatures took Christmas and added their twist to it, Jack realized that taking this holiday was wrong and gave it back to Santa, which shows the Christmas spirit of giving though he had taken it before.