With spooky season coming to a quick ending, some of us are still looking for that perfect holiday movie to keep us in the mood. It’s still too soon for Christmas celebrations but too late for those spooky and thrilling Halloween movies...so what do we do? My solution for all of you is to watch The Nightmare Before Christmas! What better way to get you excited for all the holiday fun that is to come but still feed your spooky craving?

For those that, for some reason, have never watched this film or heard of it, I’ll give you a brief description. 

 Jack Skellington aka ‘The Pumpkin King’ lives in Halloween Town, a world that only celebrates Halloween and knows nothing about any other holiday. But one day, Jack stubbles across Christmas Town and becomes instantly star-struck over the entire concept of what it is. He does his best to show the rest of his town’s people the joys of this wondrous holiday and even goes far enough to kidnap Santa Claus!

The whole concept of this film, many years later, is still so interesting to me. You have spooky characters interacting with enchanting elements of Christmas in what is arguably one of the best Tim Burton films to date.

As much as I love this movie, I still have the burning question of whether or not that this can be considered a Halloween film or a Christmas film. With most films that are special to different holidays, they make the genres very clear; Hallmark Christmas films, for example, leave no confusion as to whether or not I am watching a thriller or a holiday rom/com.

The Nightmare Before Christmas holds very obvious horror aspects, including: the main character is a skeleton who lives in a Halloween Town, is nicknamed “The Pumpkin King” and has a pet dog who is a ghost. You could instantly think that, yes, this is advertised as a Halloween film… but it’s not that simple. 

The entire film is based all around Christmas! The majority of the film is Jack discovering Christmas Town and the wonders it has to offer, which are all new and shocking to him. He starts to bring the magic of Christmas to his dark and creepy town… or, more accurately, his version of what Christmas is. This is one of the big burning questions that divides the social media world around this time of year.

The director of the film, Henry Selick, finally gave us the answer: it is a Halloween film. Selick said that, from the people who created the film’s perspective, this movie is all about how the people of Halloween Town would react to something as different as Christmas.  I could get behind this reasoning (and it was released just before Halloween of 1993) but what I see when I watch this film is people celebrating the joys of Christmas time.

Joey R.

Joey is a lover of books and all things related to superheroes. She is a hoarder of books and can’t keep up with her tbr pile.