All of you reading this have probably watched the movie The Nightmare Before Christmas.

If you have, then you’ll know it has both Christmas and Halloween elements throughout the story line.However, The Nightmare Before Christmas is simply not a Christmas movie, it is a Halloween movie.

The movie begins in HalloweenTown and stays there for the majority of the film. In Halloween Town, everything is gloomy and creepy. There are bats, spiders, witches, the Pumpkin King; aka Jack Skellington, and Oogie Boogie. None of these have anything to do with Christmas, not even a little bit. There are a few points in the film where you may stop and think “Oh yes this is definitely a Christmas movie.” You’re wrong. It’s not. If you want to watch a Christmas movie go watch The Grinch or something from Hallmark. This movie is about Halloween and the majority of it is based on the main things that you see around the Halloween holiday.

Jack Skellington did not intentionally go into Christmas Town. He accidentally falls through a door in a tree. Once he saw where he was, he noticed how different it was from his home. He notices just how happy and joyful everyone and everything is. He then finds Santa and decides that he wants to be him and change HalloweenTown into something similar to Christmas Town.

Christmas was never supposed to take place and happen in HalloweenTown. There are separate trees with separate doors for each town that holds all of the different major holidays. Jack never should have gone to Christmas Town because it caused chaos and confusion in his town. Once he attempted to make the holiday happen it wreaked havoc and sent the town into a state of turmoil. Everything went wrong simply because they were only supposed to celebrate halloween, hence the name Halloween Town.

The people of HalloweenTown exchange “gifts” with each other. These gifts consisted of the only things they know, creepy, gross tricks. They were all miserable other than the joy they got out of tricking each other. Jack’s plan had failed horribly. There is no happiness like you see in Christmas Town and nothing is the same. Even when Jack gave people specific tasks to make their holiday run smoothly, no one followed them and they did all they could to ruin the day. 

Even though there is some slight representation of the snowy and joyful holiday, The Nightmare Before Christmas is a Halloween movie. Nothing in the movie screams “Hey this movie is to watch on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day!” It is simply about Jack Skellington having a midlife crisis.