Christmas is Our Dia de Los Muertos
A time to let the dead return and sing once more
In “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King from Halloween Town, stumbles into Christmas Town. The intermixing of these holidays — one a celebration of ghosts and death, the other a season of purported joy and light — seems fitting to me. Throughout my life, the season has been a blend of the two. So many classic holiday songs, even from my youth, were sung by souls who return, in an annual, ghostly procession, to serenade us.
Christmas beams with life and hope in the darkest part of the year, symbolizing an enduring spirit. Yet in many cultures, winter represents decay, a natural metaphor for death. We, in fact, accommodate both during this holiday. When the night is at its longest and the margin between life and death is the thinnest, what better time to entertain the dead?
Christmas classics, sung by voices from the past, become a tribute to those no longer with us. Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, Elvis, Karen Carpenter, John Lennon, and many others continue to serenade us from beyond, turning Christmas into an unacknowledged Day of the Dead. Their songs, timeless and nostalgic, bridge generations, linking the living with those who have passed, much like Dia de Los Muertos in other cultures.
In our classic song concert of the dead, Nat King Cole enters and gives a rendition of “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire.” It hovers in a space between past and present, alive again for a few moments, with a warmth that transcends time, symbolizing continuity amidst life’s inevitable changes.
Burl Ives joins, and he doesn’t allow death to depress his holiday spirit at all:
“Have a holly jolly Christmas
It’s the best time of the year
I don’t know if there’ll be snow
But have a cup of cheer,” he suggests.
Elvis enters, and Christmas has never been so blue as he mourns his, once again. He is a ghost of Christmases forever past, reminding us how nostalgia is as much about sadness as joy.
John Lennon enters and wants an accounting. He demands: “And what have we done? Another year over, And a new one just begun.”
This holiday season, as we listen to the ghostly echoes of Christmas songs sung by voices long gone, we might find a newfound appreciation for this profound overlap. It’s a reminder that in the heart of winter, life and death dance together, wrapped in a melody of nostalgia and hope.
In this light, the intrusion of Jack Skellington into Christmas is a logical story twist. It’s a reflection of our own celebrations where joy and melancholy, life and remembrance, coexist. “The Nightmare Before Christmas” is more than a holiday film; it’s a reminder of the complex tapestry of human emotion that holidays evoke, where nostalgia always blends joy and sadness. Christmas intertwines the somber with the celebratory.
This season, as these melodies fill the air, they invite us to pause and reflect how Christmas is a tapestry woven from threads of joy, nostalgia, and memories of people momentarily returned to celebrate with us.
