When it comes to family-friendly Halloween classics, it's pretty hard to top The Nightmare Before Christmas. It tells the tale of Jack Skellington, the resident Pumpkin King of Halloween Town -- a city populated by friendly witches, vampires, ghosts, and monsters, whose job it is to create the Halloween holiday each year. As the annual Halloween celebrations wind down to a close, we discover that Jack, while great at his job, is feeling stuck in a rut. Isn't there more to life than the same old chills and thrills?
So Jack can't believe his good fortune when he stumbles onto a magical portal that takes him to the land of Christmas Town. He doesn't exactly understand what it is about the place that makes him feel such a warm and happy glow, but he's eager to share the wonders of Christmas with his fellow Halloween Town citizens. And, before he knows it, he's struck with an even better idea: what if, this year, he takes over the Christmas holiday himself?
After sending Halloween Town's best trick-or-treaters to find (that is, kidnap) Santa Claus from Christmas Town, Jack and his fellow scarers begin putting together their own version of Christmas: spiderweb-decorated Christmas trees, Venus-Fly-Trap Christmas wreaths, and presents that range from zombie rubber ducks to haunted toy dolls. They're convinced their take on Christmas will be the perfect way to improve the holiday -- and that the children around the world will find their surprises frightfully delightful. Unfortunately, sometimes even the most well-meaning of plans don't quite work out ...
Released in 1993, the film was animated with stop-motion techniques; instead of drawings, the characters were sculpted and then posed frame-by-frame to achieve the illusion of animated motion. The movie itself is a musical, with ten songs by composer Danny Elfman framing the backbone of the story. With an original storyline, intricately sculpted sets, and colorful, quirky, wholly engaging characters, it's a beautifully unique movie that is a quirky joy to watch.
While I find the animation bizarrely charming, and the music delightfully catchy, the real heart of the story, for me, lies in the character of Jack Skellington. Because as it turns out, Jack is not just a somewhat surprising Everyman character -- he's also got a truly inspiring lesson lying at the heart of his story.
Sure, he's a skeletal pumpkin king whose job description includes scaring the wits out of people whenever he can manage it -- but it's hard not to relate to Jack's opening lament. Who hasn't grown weary of the daily grind now and again, and found themselves in need of rekindling the enthusiasm they once had for the day-to-day challenges of life?
Jack's delight in discovering Christmas is an easy thing to relate to, too. We can all understand his sudden enthusiasm for this new world, and for the happiness -- inexplicable as he finds it -- that the Christmas spirit gives him. He doesn't understand it, but he loves it just the same.
So you almost cheer him on when he gets it in his skull to take on the holiday himself -- despite all evidence to the contrary that he'll be able to pull it off. It's not just that he doesn't understand how to make Christmas come alive; it's also that he doesn't seem particularly good at it. Still, Jack doesn't let the odds stand in his way. Believing whole-heartedly in what he and his fellows have created, he sets off with a happy heart to bring a Halloweenified Christmas to children the world over.
And he fails abysmally.
The children of the world (not to mention their parents) hate Halloweentown's Christmas gifts. Jack's Christmas flight ends in miserable defeat, and it takes a newly-released Santa Claus to right the chaos Jack has inadvertently created.
His failure doesn't come as a surprise -- not even to Jack himself, once he stops to think it over. The residents of Halloween Town had never quite grasped the concept of Christmas to begin with ("Nobody really understood," he laments to his ghost dog, Zero). Jack himself had struggled to understand Christmas, and as he'd never truly been able to explain it, it's unsurprising that his fellow Halloween citizens didn't get it either. It's only to be expected that Jack's Christmas "nightmare" proves such a disaster.
And yet, despite that failure -- Jack ultimately decides that he's not sorry that he tried. "I did my best!" he exclaims, clearly proud that he "at least ... left some stories they can tell." (Which is certainly true.) Best of all, it was in preparations and celebration of his Halloween-ified Christmas that Jack felt like himself again.
Ultimately, the joy for Jack came not from whether or not he succeeded, but in the attempt itself. And in a world where winning is often held up as the only goal of value, it's a timely reminder that there's worth to be had simply in trying.
And I asked old Jack,
"Do you remember the night
When the sky was so dark,
And the moon shone so bright?
"When a million small children,
Pretending to sleep,
Nearly didn't have Christmas at all,
So to speak?
"And would, if you could,
Turn that mighty clock back
To that long, fateful night --
Now, think carefully, Jack!
"Would you do the whole thing
All over again,
Knowing what you know now,
Knowing what you knew then?"
And he smiled, like the old
Pumpkin King that I knew,
Then turned, and asked softly of me,
"Wouldn't you?"
Happy Halloween!
-- Request the film on DVD from the Catalog
-- Request the film on Blu-ray from the Catalog
-- Request the soundtrack on CD from the Catalog
-- Request the original picture book by Tim Burton from the Catalog
-- Post by Ms. B
I'm checking it out today!
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