27 Nightmares Before Christmas

A lot of people know the It’s A Wonderful Life story by now; how it was a box office bomb in the 40s and then, due to a clerical issue, the copyright wasn’t renewed in 1974. The cable networks could pick it up for pennies, showing it over and over whenever they had a gap in the holiday schedule to fill, turning it into a beloved Christmas movie over the decades, which is why it airs every year around the holidays.

The Nightmare Before Christmas was my It’s A Wonderful Life growing up. Released in 1993, it has held its own within the holiday genre for twenty-seven years. I remember every year without fail, after trick or treating through the neighborhood, while counting my loot in the living room as my parents hosted their adults-only after party, the stop-motion movie would be playing on every age-appropriate channel to distract me and the other kids. Telling the story of Jack Skellington, a skeleton hot shot from Halloweentown who’s grown tired of repeating the same holiday year after year and becomes enchanted and then obsessed with Christmas, Nightmare offered something entirely new to the world. A little too creepy for Christmas, and a little too feel-good for Halloween, and altogether too weird for Disney, it was entirely and originally itself.

Nightmare was hardly the disappointment Wonderful Life was; despite Disney fearfully distributing it under their…