This is Halloween But It's Also About Christmas

Countless generations over the years have ponder the eternal question of why, if he is the Pumpkin King, Jack Skellington isn't a Jack O' Lantern?

I am Jack's Creepy Pumpkin Face.

However, this seemingly unsolvable puzzle actually has a simple answer once it becomes clear that the Pumpkin King is in fact Jack's title and is not at all linked to his anatomy or his species of monstrosity. In fact, it is not only his title but also his costume for Halloween. For Jack is a master of disguise.

Both of those costumes are totally inconspicuous.

The Nightmare Before Christmas is a rare film that is aesthetically a Halloween movie, set in Halloween Town with a Gothic look, but that is also simultaneously thematically about Christmas.

It features all the tropes of a Christmas move, such as snow, Santa, and how the meaning of Christmas has jack-all to do with the birth of the Messiah of Christian religion 2000 years ago but rather is about presents and goodwill to mankind. 

Pictured: Christmas! Note the lack of babies in mangers.

However, despite having the greatest song about Halloween ever...

And teaching us the meaning of Christmas...

Presents. The meaning is always presents.

The Nightmare Before Christmas is actually about something more real and serious than two of the biggest holidays of the year, namely midlife crisis. Specifically, Jack's. 

Sad Jack is sad.

The movie is all about Jack's sense of dissatisfaction with his life and job because he feels as though he is stuck in a rut. In fact, every action Jack takes in the course of the movie following the opening song is an attempt to spice up his life and bring back some sense of excitement, which explains the way he totally loses his shit when he sees snow in Christmas Town.  

What's this, what's this? Something to distract me from my growing sense of disillusionment?

Rather than buying an expensive sports car or having an affair with a younger woman, Jack focuses all his attention, and uses all his influence as the Pumpkin King, to essentially hijack Christmas as way to deal with the growing monotony he feels in his life and work.   

This is totally not an image of a man desperately searching for meaning in the world.

In dressing up and acting like Santa Claus, Jack is adopting a new identity in order to shred the traces of his previous alter ego, the Pumpkin King, and subdue the sense of of lack he felt in that role. 

He also enforced slave labour just like Santa. For authenticity.

However, by the end of the movie, after he has been blown up by missiles and landing in a graveyard with his Santa suit in tatters, Jack realises that although it didn't work out, he did his best and haters are gonna hate. Furthermore, he comes to understand that he cannot deny who he is and with this revelation in mind, he goes on to save Sally from Oogie Boogie the Boogeyman.

And that is how Jack got his groove back.