Introduction to Nightmare before Christmas
The Nightmare before Christmas is a Halloween movie that’s a little spooky and a little heartwarming and a lot of fun… and like a lot of films out there, it gives us a chance to reflect on the deeper truths in life and faith. The main character is Jack Skellington (SLIDE) who is the Pumpkin King of Halloweentown. His role is to create Halloween for the world each year – to bring the scary and the creepy, the goblins and the ghouls together to haunt and frighten. Jack has been doing this for as long as he could remember, but after his most recent Halloween he has become bored with the same old annual routine and leaves Halloweentown in search of something new and different.
He stumbles into Christmastown, a place very different from his own town what with all the bright lights and warm spirits and joyful decorations and songs. It’s so different from what he knows and he is eager to bring the news back to his friends. So Jack attempts to describe Christmas to them, undaunted by their lack lustre response, he decides that he wants to try it out for himself. And that’s when things go wrong….
Reflection
Although we don’t know how long Jack Skellington has been the Pumpkin King, ruler of Halloweentown and head of creating all things spooky, it’s safe to assume he’s had this position for awhile. Things run like clockwork each year and he’s in the groove. But when we meet Jack at the beginning of the movie, he’s facing a personal crisis. It’s not just boredom he’s feeling…if you listen to his song of lament, his sentiment echoes one I’m sure most of us on a spiritual path have thought at some point, a yearning for something more significant than the world he’s currently in. He sings “Oh, somewhere deep inside of these bones, an emptiness began to grow, there’s something out there, far from home, a longing that I’ve never known.” His lyrics echo C.S. Lewis who wrote in Mere Christianity “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another one.”
VIDEO: Jack’s Lament
What’s funny is that Jack is a king in his domain. He’s got it all, he’s the boss of Halloween, but all the praise and sense of identity he gets from that role feels hollow in comparison to his inner search for meaning. He knows that something greater is out there, and seems to recognize that what he feels is a spiritual longing when he reaches Christmastown and sings: “And in my bones, I feel a warmth that’s coming from inside… This empty place inside of me is filling up.”
As humans we know this feeling, don’t we? That little wonder in our hearts if there’s something more as we go about our daily tasks, or that full on existential crisis where we wonder what is even the point of it all. We are not the first to experience this, and Jack the Pumpkin King wasn’t either – our ancient texts show us that God’s people through the ages have had this exact feeling, and the writer of the Psalms lifts up the comparison “My soul is longing for God, just as a thirsty deer desperately searches for a drink of water.”
We try to fill this emptiness in our hearts with all kinds of things – with buying new clothes or tech or things for our houses, with trying new hobbies, with a career change, with exercise or diets or self medication and on and on… but it’s not until we turn to God’s love and grace that we experience the true peace that Jesus promised.
This search for meaning is something that appears again and again, in both our Bible and in our books, movies, and art because it’s such an important human question.
Let’s take a moment, turn to your neighbour or a couple of neighbours and let’s chat about this theme – can you think of other books or movies where characters are searching for something more? Have you yourself experienced this feeling? What helped you move through it?
So as we’ve just described, Jack is longing for something more in his life and in his wanderings he discovers it – Christmas! He is fascinated with the joy and warmth, and attempts to describe it to his spooky Halloween friends – but they don’t understand, so he then turns to the scientific method to figure it out.
VIDEO: Jack experimenting
Science is amazing and has helped us to learn so much about the world, but Jack discovers its limitations when he attempts to understand the spirit or the feeling behind Christmas by examining decorations and traditions and physical objects. Take a moment and imagine walking into your own house on Christmas Eve. If you didn’t know the story of Jesus, the legend of St. Nicholas, if you didn’t know that the stockings were sewn by your aunt and that ornament was from the year you were born and that shortbread recipe was your great grandmother’s and that song was the song you ALWAYS listened to when the tree went up, would any of it mean anything? Yes it would be beautiful and cozy, but if you didn’t know about the spirit of love and connection and God’s gift to the world that we celebrate, it might just be kind of odd to see a tree indoors.
As humans we know and talk about things we cannot see all the time. Emotions, our spirits or souls, memory, ideas, hopes, dreams. We get that those exist, but what we really like is to have something in front of us that we can see, touch, smell, or taste. That’s why some of us hang on to things – china or decorations or books or toys or cards. The thing itself is not usually of that much value, it’s the meaning behind it, the person we love that it reminds us of, feeling of being connected to God or to our ancestors or to something bigger than ourselves.
We do this in church as well – we light a candle, not because the candle itself is a part of Jesus, or even anything special – a dollar store candle will do the trick. It’s because the act of bringing forth that light reminds us that we are not alone.
We gather around this table to celebrate a meal, not because the table or the bread, or the juice or the dishes are particularly special, but because the act of remembering Jesus and his love for his friends and for us is more meaningful when we physically participate in the receiving and the tasting of the very ordinary things.
We gather in this building, where a stranger with no knowledge of Christianity would be perplexed by the cross, the font, the images of some guy on the wall, the windows, the hymn books. Without our sacred story and understanding of God’s love, a cross is just two pieces of wood on the wall. Just as Paul explained to the early church, if we have all of our symbols and actions and rituals but they are not surrounded in love, they are like “seeing through a mirror dimly” (1 Cor 13:12).
As he concludes his experiments, Jack Skellington comes to this understanding that Christmas is more than just the objects he has collected:
VIDEO: Jack’s Onsession
Jack ultimately concludes that “just because I cannot see it doesn’t mean I can’t believe it.” He finally seems to get that Christmas is about more than the physical objects that we’ve attached to it. Much like the Grinch, who after he steals Christmas discovers that “maybe Christmas doesn’t come from a store, maybe Christmas perhaps means a little bit more.”
I don’t know about you, but I find I don’t read my Bible or sit in silent reflection with God as often as I’d like. But there are opportunities everywhere for faithful contemplation – even the creators of animated Disney movies understand that people gravitate towards entertainment that addresses life’s big questions.
If you watch the whole movie, you’ll see Jack attempting to take on the role of Santa Clause, and it… well it doesn’t turn out very well, but that’s a whole other sermon.
For today, we’ll pause for a moment giving thanks for the fun and light heartedness of this season, and for the movies that re-orient us to our desire to follow in the way of Jesus, seeking faith, hope, and above all else, love.
