The Nightmare Before Christmas is a real treat for watchers of all ages. This gothic, romantic, and slightly macabre creation from Tim Burton’s mind combines the jolly aspects of christmas and the spooky vibe of Halloween to make a beautiful and morally teaching film. But the question remains to critical movie-goers, is it a Christmas movie or a Halloween movie?
Senior Wes Conley doesn’t think that a Christmas movie should scare its viewers.
“The movie is way too spooky to be a Christmas Movie, it just doesn’t have the same vibe as your traditional Christmas movie,” said Conley
The Bear River Current believes that The Nightmare Before Christmas is undoubtedly a Halloween movie.The major census of reviewers and even of the film’s director Henry Selick is that The Nightmare before Christmas is meant more for Halloween than for Christmas. Now this doesn’t mean we won’t be able to enjoy this movie during the Christmas season, but the movie’s vibe is more acquitted to the month of Halloween.
Senior Alex Fassel believed the film is undoubtedly meant for Halloween considering the general theme of the music and script.
“It’s a timeless Halloween movie for anyone, the music is totally Halloween themed” Fassel said.
Nearly all of the music in The Nightmare Before Christmas is Halloween Themed, making an argument for a Christmas theme difficult. Out of the 21 songs in the film, the word “Halloween” is mentioned about 37 times, while “Christmas” is only said roughly 22 times.
Despite the story of the film taking place in both Christmas-Town and Halloween-Town, the main plot of the story is that The King of Halloween, Jack Skellington, wants to replace Santa as the mascot for Christmas. His fatal flaw was that he tried to run Christmas like Halloween, even though the base ideas for each holiday are completely different. Halloween is believed to be the day that the barriers between the realms of living and dead disappear, while Christmas is the day that Jesus was supposedly born. These two days are polar opposites of each other, with the creation of life and death for their respective holidays.
The Nightmare Before Christmas simply doesn’t have the elements of a Christmas movie. The film creates a twisted Christmas in Halloween-Town, with all the presents being terrifying versions of children’s gifts, the reindeer were replaced with re-animated skeletons, and many more apparition Christmas aspects. This clearly makes the movie to be some sort of warped holiday story revolving around Halloween.
Spanish Teacher Daniel Bus has contemplated the question of whether The Nightmare Before Christmas is a Halloween or Christmas movie before, but he has settled with a belief that it’s something in between.
“A Christmas themed Halloween movie is very original, I’m a huge fan of Tim Burton too, his art style is something else. I’ve thought about this question many times actually,” he said
The month that movies are released in typically has little to do with the actual movie, but the motive for this release might be influenced by TIm Burton’s love for October, which he has displayed several times throughout his interviews. Senior Ian Hayes has an interesting view of the movie, simply considering the time that it was released.
“I think it’s a Halloween movie since it was released on October 13th, 1993,” said Hayes.
As the writer of the movie, Burton has said in several interviews before that the movie was intended to put a cheerful twist on Halloween, and that it could potentially “invade” the other holidays.
