Clickable Advent Calendar, 7: The Nightmare Before Christmas

I thought I was going to have an experience out of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas yesterday. I was taking my daughter to “Breakfast With Santa” at her kindergarten, and the first thing I saw when we pulled into the parking lot was a hearse, because the church part of the building was having a funeral that morning. It made me flash on Jack Skellington and his coffin-shaped equivalent to Santa’s sleigh.

My daughter recently declared The Nightmare Before Christmas as her favorite movie. I wouldn’t personally go that far, although I do love it: the design and animation are so good, nearly every frame of the film has something cool and would make a great poster or screensaver. Danny Elfman composes some great melodies, but the lyrics don’t always measure up. “This is Halloween” and “Kidnap the Sandy Claws” are the two show-stoppers, but lately I’ve had the following tune stuck in my head when I’ve been unpacking the Christmas boxes from the attic. (Incidentally, I like the way Jack sort of has a Tim Gunn of “Project Runway” thing going on.) There’s a “karaoke version” of the same song here: