The Nightmare Before Christmas: a Christmas Movie or a Halloween Movie?

The “Nightmare Before Christmas” has been an exceedingly popular movie during every Halloween season since it came out on October 13, 1993. Its popularity, however, has come with some controversy; because the movie features both the Halloween and Christmas seasons in it, people have regularly started arguments regarding whether it is a Christmas movie or a Halloween movie. While I likely won’t be finding a solution to this topic in my work, it’s worth looking at the reasons why this debate started.

First off, at the beginning of the story we are introduced to Halloweentown; an entire town based on Halloween. As well as, the main character, Jack Skellington. As the movie goes on, Jack becomes sick of Halloween in Halloweentown being the same every year, so he wanders off into the forest and finds a series of doors that lead to a town corresponding to each holiday/season. Jack enters the door to Christmastown and is amazed by their holiday. So, he decides to kidnap Santa Claus and take over his job on Christmas night and deliver gifts made by the residents of Halloweentown to the children of Christmastown. This event ends up taking a horrific turn and results in the childrens’ toys attacking and petrifying them. After seeing the terrified children, Jack realizes what he has done and learns that he shouldn’t assume that he is capable of doing other people’s jobs better than they can, and lets Santa Claus fix the damage he had done and restore Christmas.

This movie shows a vast amount of evidence that it is a Halloween movie. For example, the beginning of the movie starts off by introducing Halloweentown and its residents through a song, which has been an extremely popular song during the Halloween season. This positions it to be the main setting and sets the tone of the movie to be very creepy and dark. The movie’s main character, Jack Skellington is also Halloweentown’s “Pumpkin King”, and is in charge of Halloween every year, which is a contributing factor to it being a Halloween movie. In addition, the movie’s overall tone and aura that it gives off is very creepy, gloomy and dull.

Even though there are plenty of reasons that this movie is a Halloween movie, there are also some reasons that someone could say it is a Christmas movie. Such as, the movie quite literally having “Christmas” in its name, which I would say is most likely the biggest reason that people have started arguments based on what kind of movie it is in the first place. Also, the event of Christmas night being the main event in the storyline, meaning that Jack’s plan to take over Christmas was responsible for the building of the climax in the story.

Overall, my personal opinion is that “The Nightmare Before Christmas” is a Halloween movie. I say this because since the majority of the characters introduced throughout the movie are part of Halloweentown, they manage to turn every aspect of the movie to be creepy and dark even during the scenes in Christmastown, which makes the movie perfect for the Halloween season. All in all, this is just my personal opinion and this debate likely won’t be ending soon.