A fan favorite movie around this time of the year is the classic Tim Burton film The Nightmare Before Christmas but October isn’t the only time that movie shines. A large debate by many is “Is it a Christmas or Halloween movie?” and both sides make great points.
The iconic 1993 movie musical features the character Jack Skellington, the pumpkin king, as he lives in “Halloween Town,” a town focused on the holiday and the orchestrations needed for it to happen each year.
We learn that there is a sort of town for each holiday, and Jack, while on a walk, stumbles upon “Christmas Town” and is enamored by the concept of the holiday. Jack has begun to grow tired of Halloween and with the goal to do something new in life, he decides to take over Christmas. He kidnaps Santa Claus and attempts to recreate the icons of the holiday he fails to draw the line between the drastically different days and ends up nearly ruining Christmas.
I feel as though on surface level it is obviously a Halloween movie. The movie takes place majorly in Halloween Town and all the characters are spoofs of typically spooky things such as lake monsters and werewolves, really there’s little major Christmas aspects besides the inclusion of the holiday and it being featured in the title.
This debate has been pretty heated for ages since the movie was out and there are convincing points to both sides.
“I think it’s a Halloween movie because it’s based on the spirit of Halloween and how Jack wasn’t appreciating what Halloween was” Jade Lodoen said.
But again that’s all surface level.
The most poignant part of the pro-halloween movie side is that the movie was originally released in October, making it an obvious film for Halloween. There’s almost nothing to argue against that, it wasn’t released in November between the holidays and wasn’t released for the point of Christmas so how could you disagree with that as proof for it being a Halloween movie?
Some people, however, think it is a Christmas movie.
The actual event of Halloween is over at the start of the movie as they celebrate how successful it was and they begin to plan for the next years. Personally I’ve never seen a Halloween focal movie that takes place with the holiday at all.
As Jack discovered exactly what Christmas is they rarely address Halloween and shift their focus to the new holiday. While they do remain in Halloween town they are strictly talking about their new Christmas.
“I think it’s more of a Halloween movie because I feel like there are more Halloween elements like the decorations and stuff and in a way I feel like it’s about Halloween going wrong.” Kambree Marreel said which makes for an interesting juxtaposition to the previous point.
However it’s necessary to consider the intent of the film of course. Just because people interpret it as this or that doesn’t mean that was the goal.
The director Henry Selick has been on both sides of the debate. In 2015 he expressed that he felt it was a Halloween movie during a Q&A but in a recent interview with the New York Post Selick said “I know ‘Nightmare’ at its heart is a Christmas movie,” when asked again. His reasons was the fact that no matter the situation in the film the topic always goes back to Christmas and it corses through the film nonstop.
Additionally though, Danny Elfman, the composer for the film said “It’s obviously about Christmas, but for me, it’s a Halloween movie,” when asked to share his perspective of the debate.
At this point a majority of the signs point towards it being a Christmas movie at its core regardless of its Halloween apparence. Though Halloween isn’t being completely neglected it’s simply just more engulfed by the opposing holiday.
Personally I chose to enjoy it for both seasons but more so at Halloween time and I ignore and blaring Christmas themes. It does include the traditional frights and character personalities you’d expect to see in a kids Halloween movie and I feel as though it should be taken as such.
