Tim Burton’s “The Nightmare Before Christmas” has been debated for years on whether or not it should be classified as a Christmas movie or a Halloween movie. 

The story starts off with the main protagonist Jack Skellington, the king of Halloweentown, becoming bored with the same old routine of scaring people on Halloween. This boredom drives him to stumble upon Christmastown, it intrigues him and seems like a solution to his apathy for Halloween. With his plan to kidnap Santa Claus and take over Christmastown, Jack sets out on his journey. 

The problem with this storyline is that it allowed for people to decide whether it fell under the Christmas or Halloween category.

The minority of these two opinions is that this film is a Halloween movie rather than a Christmas movie. The movie’s release date was right before Halloween, October 29th, 1993, which started the speculation that this movie was meant to have frightening intent. While the storyline follows Jack’s plan to invade Christmastown and the movie takes place as Halloween is ending, it’s still believed to generally be based on Halloween as the movie ends with Jack’s true passion being for Halloween. 

Another detail supporting it being a Halloween movie is the overall scare factor of the characters. The design of most characters from Halloween town are sure to scare young kids. Along with this, a majority of Tim Burton’s movies are meant to have that unsettling, spooky feeling.

As for those that say it’s a Christmas movie, they have an equal amount of evidence. The movie’s main plot line revolves around Christmas and even begins on Christmas Eve. The characters spend their time trying to celebrate Christmas and the main fixation Jack has becomes attempting to run Christmastown, therefore the movie drifts off from its initial Halloween theme. 

People often associate the transformation of a character with Christmas time due to Christmas’ positive effects on personalities and emotion, which we see happen to Jack in the film. He tries to become a more giving person in his attempts to run Christmas and ends up learning a lesson about himself. A positive theme in Christsmas movies is a development in the main character which occurs in Jack when he realizes he should stay true to what he loves. 

Along with this, almost every Christmas movie takes place around Christmas time, unlike Halloween movies which could take place any day of the year. This movie is centered around the  days leading up to Christmas and how Jack needs to complete the tasks needed for the holiday in time for actual Christmas day. Halloween movies could be based on any day in the year as they don’t need to be based on Halloween, they just need to be scary. Christmas movies on the other hand don’t make sense unless they are around Christmas time.

Finally, the director himself once stated in The New York Post, “‘Thirty years after I directed the film, beneath its candy corn coating, skeletons and vampires, corpse child and witches, I know ‘Nightmare’ at its heart is a Christmas movie’”.

Overall, The Nightmare Before Christmas could be considered either a Halloween or Christmas movie based on your personal opinion.