Actually, Halloween = Christmas.
Well, 31[sub]OCT[/sub] = 25[sub]DEC[/sub], anyway.
Being scary, watching scary but campy horror movies and eating lots and lots of candy? Also, sometimes seances.
One critic’s (I don’t remember who) take on it was that the Halloweentown Christmas, however weird, was more heartfelt than Christmastown’s. He pointed out this dichotomy was quite clear in Making Christmas which contrasted HT’s homemade gifts with the elves’ mass production. I dunno if I agree with him but it is an interesting thought.
Oh, and I’m seeing the midnight showing tonight.
All Hallow’s Evening. Shortened to All Hallow’s Eve, then shortened to Hallow’s Even’, then shortened again to Hallowe’en.
Midnight on the evening of October 31, aka the morning of All Saint’s Day, is when the ghosts walk the earth.
That’s genius!
It’s Satan’s birthday, of course!
Don’t you read Chick tracts!?
He is depressed about his job but he still does it well. The opening celebration of Halloween, they all think it’s the best ever. Jack does feel an emptiness in his bones because it is, to him, the same a last year and the year before that and the the year before that. Later, after he is rejected as a new Santa Clause, he does say that he will do next Halloween better but it’s more like, it is the job he was born to do, is destined to do and fighting your destiny is a bad thing.
So if anything, Jack learns to accept himself for the way he is, to play to his strengths, or to follow his bless, or maybe, that he is stuck with being the king of halloween and he like it or lump it.
Aw, shucks.
It’s actually a plot hook from an Asimov short story.
But I do agree that it’s a delightful equation. 
It’s always been open well before Halloween: The new attraction opens early October 2001
There’s a road trip, a dysfunctional family reunion, and a death in Nightmare Before Christmas?
What the hell? Why on earth? I do own it, but still…
:mad:
ETA- oh wait, let me guess… to make people buy a “new and improved” version? Assholes… :rolleyes:
And didn’t they already do that a few years ago?
(“Yeah, but this time it’s really, really super-improved!”)
The movie wasn’t originally a “Disney” movie; it was released under the associated Touchstone Pictures studio label as it was considered way too dark for Disney fare. I saw almost no associated marketing and merchandising for years after it first came out, probably because it didn’t actually do all that well in the theater since it’s kind of an odd movie, not really fitting into any neat marketing category. Changing standards meant that later it was pushed as a kids movie and a second wave of popularity resulted in toys, figures, stickers, etc. that I didn’t see the first time around. When I went to see it in the theater in '93 there were probably only about 20% kids, and most people I knew who saw it were teens to adults.
Disney is milking it now because it became popular over time, but initially it wasn’t your typical marketer’s wet-dream.
concur
I just rented the DVD from Netflix. Uusually, when the movie goes out of print the Netflix copies “get lost.”
I have always seen it as a Halloween movie.
I was pretty young when it first came out, and I saw it as a movie you watch in October, wait a month, then enjoy it again in December. I was at the age where decorating for the holidays was a thrill, so a movie mixing all the fun of Halloween and the fun of Christmas blew my tiny little mind. I do remember some of the controversy around it (especially the boogey boys’ song about all the awful things they wanted to do to Santa Claus) but that stuff didn’t bother me and I just enjoyed it as a sort of homage to the two secularized holidays as they exist today.
MilliCal replying here:
It’s definitely a Halloween movie.
I remember the bonus of your choice of 4 screen shot watches with a meal at Burger King around the time the movie was released. I bought a watch without the meal - it was my favorite watch ever - someone “borrowed” it and that was the end of that.