Nightmare Before Christmas

Here it is October and my iPod has gotten very depressing. According to my spreadsheets, there are very specific things I must listen to during the month of October. First and foremost is Wojciech Kilar’s soundtrack to Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Spooky and haunting. Another one is the soundtrack to Sweeney Todd, wonderfully dark and hateful. There’s the soundtrack to the Addams Family movie. The soundtracks to Aliens and Predator and the Wolfman and Sherlock Holmes. And there’s the Nightmare Before Christmas.



Nightmare Before Christmas has always proven a difficult problem for me. An annual problem. The root question here is, how do you classify the movie? Is it a Halloween movie or a Christmas one? The question has been driving me crazy ever since I saw it in the theater in 1993.

Halloween entertainment isn’t necessarily as distinct as Christmas entertainment. Any horror movie can be considered Halloween entertainment just as it can be up for movie-watching fun at any time of the year. The elements that make a good Halloween movie are atmosphere and character. Does it have a creepy, gothic atmosphere? Does it have outrageous characters that you can model a costume on? Okay… you’re good!



Christmas movies are very specific. They must take place at Christmas. The enjoyment of the holiday must be in jeopardy in some manner. And Christmas must be either ‘saved’ or ‘understood’ at the climax of the movie. There are many, many, MANY movie that fall under these tight guidelines.



My favorite Christmas movie is Die Hard. It takes place at Christmas. And it’s Die Hard, which is awesome.

Nightmare Before Christmas is… sigh. Nightmare Before Christmas has both.



It’s gothic. Most of the action happens at Halloween Town, which answers the need for a spooky setting. The main character is Jack Skellington, the King of Halloween, and almost everyone he interacts with is a spooky horror character that would make a great Halloween costume. So…. Right? Halloween. Right?


But the movie STARTS at the very end of Halloween. And ends on Christmas Even with a save-the-Christmas moment! The movie even has a Christmas message. Santa Claus is in the movie! Santa Claus gets kidnapped in the movie!! It has elves! Ugh. It’s a Christmas movie. Impossible.


I think this method of breaking all the rules by adhering to all the rules is why the movie has burned itself into my brain as a timeless classic.

Ultimately, the movie makes me love Halloween and I can’t think of a single time I’ve watched it at Christmas time. So it’s a Halloween movie.

…right?



This movie caught me off guard this year with a facet of our family development I wasn’t entirely aware of: Holiday traditions. As kids, holiday traditions are extremely fun and important. As adult daddies and mommies, they’re a pain in the butt. Unless you’re my ridiculous sister. (http://www.3peasinbrooklyn.com/) What caught me off guard is the traditions I’m creating for the kids without even realizing it.

My youngest son, Alex, is six. And when it came to his attention that it was even slightly close to October, he wanted to watch Nightmare Before Christmas. I laughed at the request, and asked him why. He said, very plainly, “it’s tradition”.



I have a love/hate thing with traditions. For me, they’re a tool to invoke nostalgia. But logically speaking, if you do the same thing every year there’s nothing to mark that year in your memory as unique. So do traditions actually hurt the lasting memories of the holidays? My oldest kid is thirteen, and we’ve already built a lot of traditions surrounding Christmas. My mother, however, has so many traditions surrounding Christmas that they start on November first and fill a calendar with red and green ink.



And the fact that this is not in my control is a little upsetting. The kids are forming traditions of their own based on whatever we ended up doing last year. Ugh. I have to be extremely careful about every activity I plan in the December time frame. It’s why I’ve avoided devoting a blog to anyone’s birthday or anniversary. I don’t want it to get caught up in an expected, traditional cliché.

Some things seem to grow to be entirely not within my control. Like the holiday traditions we follow in the minds of my family. Or whether or not the Nightmare Before Christmas is a clearly-classifiable movie. For the most part, that seems to really bother me. But every once in awhile I relax, put things in perspective, and I’m comforted by the fact that such issues just really don’t matter.

Thanks,
DCD

…

…

… it’s a Christmas movie.