“Listen now, you don’t understand. That’s not the point of Christmasland.” — Jack Skellington, The Nightmare Before Christmas

Every year around Christmastime, debates rage as to whether a given movie is a Christmas movie. Die Hard is a Christmas movie because it takes place during Christmas and Christmas decorations are seen throughout, according to the Christmas Movie Alignment Chart. A similar case could be made for J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: after all, its full of elves and the Quest of the Ring begins on Christmas Day.

Perhaps it should be obvious, but Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas (henceforth “Nightmare”) is a Christmas movie, and one of the best. While Burton self-consciously wanted to create a claymation Christmas special in the molds of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, and The Year Without A Santa Claus, Nightmare excels them all in its ad fontes return to the themes and tone of the original Christmas story.

“The people living in darkness have seen a great light.” — Matthew 4:16

Far from disqualifying Nightmare, the strange, scariness of Burton’s Christmas story captures the biblical setting perfectly. The dramatis personae surrounding Christ’s birth are terrifying: not just pagan practitioners of magic arts like the wise men, but Herod the child-butcher and even Satan too (per Revelation’s apocalyptic account). What are Burton’s Pumpkin King protagonist Jack Skellington or the sackcloth villain Oogie-Boogie to these? Christmas begins in the middle of a nightmare, even if it does not end there. Without the enveloping scene of death, the occult, and political machinations, it would be little more than a Hallmark card. Christ’s birth is a light that, like the wayfinding star above Bethlehem, pierces through the darkness. For “in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing,” as Tolkien wrote in his own Christmas story.

Nightmare is not about Halloween, or at least not in the beginning. Importantly, neither the English title nor a single one of Nightmare’s various foreign language titles makes any explicit reference to Halloween. Time and time again, the titles are direct translations of “nightmare before Christmas,” or, as in the Latin American title, “The Strange World of Jack,” and, in France, “the Strange Christmas of Mr. Jack.” Each variation on the title provides an important key to the film as a whole.

“The nightmare before Christmas” is not merely a calendrical observation, reminding us what we already know: that Halloween comes several months before Christmas. Halloweentown is a place that Christmas has never come— like C.S. Lewis’ Narnia under the White Witch, only substituting darkness for snow. “The strange world of Jack” is haunted by the absence of Christmas, much as the eyes of Jack and many other characters are absent, marked by nothing but empty holes. Christmas itself is not strange, only “the strange Christmas of Mr. Jack,” following an incursion from Halloweentown. From the very first song, we are invited to “see something strange” in “this, our town of Halloween,” but never in Christmastown’s purity. 

“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” — Jack (also known as C.S. Lewis)

If the film titles are a hermeneutic guide, so are the songs and musical score composed by Danny Elfman (written long before the plot was complete). After our introduction to Halloweentown (“This Is Halloween”) we proceed to “Jack’s Lament,” in which we learn that Jack has grown weary of Halloweentown. Alone among its residents he feels “somewhere deep inside of these bones an emptiness began to grow.” This longing “for something out there, far from my home” takes Jack wandering. And, by a literal felix culpa (happy fall), Jack stumbles into Christmastown, beginning the third major song of the film, “What’s This?”

In Christmastown, Jack has finally left his desaturated cave of shadows (many characters like Jack’s dog Zero are literally that: not claymation but images projected on a wall). Here, at last, “there’s color everywhere.” Like Lewis’ heaven in The Great Divorce, Christmastown is more real, more solid, and even the snow there is a comforting warmth compared to Jack’s cold kingdom. But most importantly of all, Christmastown is a place where “the nightmares can’t be found” (the film’s sole mention of “nightmare”).

“From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has
suffered violence, and the violent take it by force.” — Matthew 11:12

Upon returning to Halloweentown, Jack becomes engrossed with making sense of what he has experienced. He has all of the trappings of Christmas but lacks understanding: “simple objects, nothing more, but something’s hidden through a door. Something’s there I cannot see; what does it mean?” Jack’s obsession (the title of the quoted track) runs astray when he determined to manufacture his own Christmas by kidnapping and replacing Santa Claus. This, finally, is “The Strange Christmas of Mr. Jack,” complete with a skeleton sleigh, Rudolph-like ghost dog, and presents so terrifying that the police and then the military eventually get involved. 

Jack’s intentions are good—he wants a Christmas “filled with laughter and joy”—but eyeless Jack is blinded by his ambitions. Only another felix culpa can set him straight, as his sleigh is struck by a missile and he plummets to the ground and into the arms of an angel in a graveyard.

It is this symbolic death that restores Jack to life: “for the first time since I don’t remember when I feel just like my old bony self again.” But before Jack can enjoy this newfound vigor, he must first stop Oogie Boogie from eating Santa Claus (in what would have been the completion of Jack’s cannibalization of Christmas). Only then can Jack make full his repentance, asking and receiving the forgiveness of Santa Claus. 

But Santa does more than forgive Jack. He sets everything right, even as he leaves Halloweentown forever changed.

“‘What’s this?’ ‘Why it’s completely new.’ ‘Must be a Christmas thing.’ ‘What’s this?’
‘It’s really very strange.’ ‘This is Halloween. This is Halloween’” — Finale / Reprise

Santa’s second coming brings snow to Halloweentown (the film’s final happy fall), and the entire town joins in Jack’s song of Christmas wonder, weaving in their own Halloween melodies. With the fresh snowfall reflecting the moonlight, you can even detect new hints of color in the darkness. Halloween may remain “very strange,” but it is no longer a nightmare. 

Because although the darkness may abide a little longer, once Christmas comes, the nightmare is finally over. No more the nightmare before Christmas, this is Halloween.