Audrey Renaud, Comedy Editor
People have been debating which holiday Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas should be associated with since 1993, the year the movie was released. The argument that people have is whether the movie is for Halloween or Christmas. A popular opinion in the matter is, even though it is in the title and it has Christmas themes, this is a Halloween movie.
The movie starts in a forest and there is a circle of trees with different holiday symbols on them, and after showing all of them the camera stops on the Halloween door, and then the door opens. Then the movie takes you into Halloween Town as the song “This is Halloween” plays in the background, which leads to the main character, Jack Skellington, who is a giant talking skeleton, being introduced. So far, it is extremely obvious what kind of movie this is, but as it goes on peoples’ confusion becomes justified.
Jack ends up getting lost in the forest and he ends up at the trees with the holiday symbols on them, and he ends up being intrigued by the Christmas door. He then opens this door and falls through it into Christmas Town, where he discovers snow, elves, and Santa Clause. He loves everything so much that he decides that he has to have it. Jack forms a plan to take over Christmas and he wants to have reindeer, and give presents, and essentially wants to become Santa. To do this though, he arranges to kidnap Santa and throw him in a dungeon with a monster. This big plan does not work out, though, because the presents and reindeer are scary, and as Jack is trying to be Santa, his sleigh gets shot out of the sky by scared citizens.
In the end this movie is more focused on Halloween and a creepy undertone frames the entire movie. Jack goes back to Halloween and he and Santa end on good terms with each other, which does give the movie a positive ending. So even though Jack does discover and love Christmas, it is the fact that he tries to take over the holiday but then bring a creepy edge to it that makes it a Halloween movie.
Trojan Times 
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