The Nightmare Before Christmas is a Parable for Our Secular Age
Hear me Out.
If you were to ask me what I’m more excited about this year:
A. Getting an offer from a fantastic publisher for a book I’ve been working on for six years, or…
B. Seeing a bunch of folks including professors at Oxford University get excited about a thread I wrote connecting the work of Tim Burton and Charles Taylor’s “A Secular Age”…
I’m telling you…I’d have to think about it.
If you don’t care about Tim Burton or a Catholic philosopher’s take on life in a secular society, no worries! We’ll just stop being friends forever. OR, alternatively, you could read through how both Tim Burton’s classic gothic claymation phenom is actually a profound take on life in modernity. Then I would be more excited than ever. So, give it a try? Please?
Okay. Let’s begin.
Every year I watch this movie, I think to myself: "What is this movie really ABOUT?" I'm usually pretty intuitive about these kinds of things, but tNBC has always haunted me because I've never felt like I quite had it right. I never had the one puzzle piece that unlocked it. This year, it all clicked into place. Let's start with Act I.
Act I: The Malaise of Our Secular Age
Jack is the centerpiece of Halloweentown, and…He's literally a skeleton of a human being. Let that sink in. The beginning of the film has Jack experiencing the kind of "malaise" (a feeling of uneasiness without being sure why) Taylor talks about experiencing in a world that is no longer enchanted by the Christian story. Jack has achieved everything the secular narratives tells him will give him a feeling of transcendence. Specifically, notice the way Jack has “mastered” the world around him through what the philosopher Jacque Ellul would call the modern obsession with “technique”:
There are few who'd deny, at what I do I am the best
For my talents are renowned far and wide…
I'm the master of fright, and a demon of light
And I'll scare you right out of your pants…
Jack has mastered his craft. He’s at the top of his field. And yet, all of this technique, while producing the desired results, can’t take away his feeling of malaise:
Oh, somewhere deep inside of these bones
An emptiness began to grow
There's something out there, far from my home
A longing that I've never known
"There's something deep inside of my bones,” Jack sings, “…a longing that I've never known." This malaise (or “emptiness”, as Jack puts it) is present in Jack because he lives in what Taylor calls the “immanent frame”: a worldview that is essentially materialist, and so believes there is no transcendent story or force guiding things. It is a “disenchanted” world. It is also a humanistic world, placing humanity at the center of things: Jack - the figure of humanity in halloweentown - is literally worshipped by everyone. This is what it feels like, Taylor argues, to live in our secular age, even at the very top of the economic food chain. Longings we can’t explain. A growing emptiness. The weariness we feel in a world without meaning.
We see this disenchantment viscerally in the Halloweentown characters: There is an obvious aesthetic horror/ugliness to Halloweentown. Even those who are living are obvious depictions of death, because no one living in the immanent frame can ultimately escape the fact that without transcendence, death kills all meaning. However, at the beginning of the film, Jack - like most moderns - believes that even within his immanent frame, he can find transcendence and purpose. Importantly, Sally - Jack’s love interest - knows this isn't true. She's the only who sees that Jack's task is doomed to failure from the start.
Respectively, I think Jack represents "Naive Secularism" and Sally, "Sober Secularism". So Sally, here, becomes a prophetic figure for what Jack ultimately must realize: the immanent frame can't hold transcendent meaning.
Act II: Discovering Enchantment
In Act II, Jack must discover that the humanistic view of life can't hold transcendent meaning. So, he stumbles into Christmastown, where the LITERAL STORY OF THE INCARNATION is the framework for living.
Jack is captivated by the aesthetics of Christmastown. He's spellbound by the values of the transcendent framework: love, beauty, purpose, etc. (at the center of which is our Christ-figure, Santa Clause, more on that in a moment). In the same way, those of us living in modernity may still feel the pull of the enchanted world we’ve left behind, where the Christian story provided the framework for the kind of transcendent truth, beauty and love we all desire “deep inside of our bones”. We could think, here, of the New Atheist Richard Dawkins’ recent proclamation that he wishes to be a “cultural Christian”, because he does not want to live in the philosophy of immanence. And, interestingly, Dawkins specifically points to the enchantment of Christmas:
I love hymns and Christmas carols, and…I sort of feel ‘at home’ in the Christian ethos. I feel we are a Christian country in that sense. It’s true that the number of people who actually believe in Christianity is going down, and I am happy with that. But I would not be happy if, for example, we lost all our cathedrals and our beautiful parish churches. And so, I count myself a cultural Christian.
Richard Dawkins is, almost literally, Jack Skellington in Christmastown. Jack feels ‘at home’ in Christmastown, as his feeling of malaise is whisked away by a place enchanted by the Christian narrative. Yet, like Dawkins, Jack does not really ‘believe in’ the Christian framework for Christmastown, as we’ll see.
Rather than entering into the Christian Framework, Jack tries to borrow its values and drag them down into the immanent frame of Halloweentown. Yet when he presents his Christened vision of human flourishing through a stirring speech, the members of Halloweentown can't fathom it. As he tries to articulate the pure love and beauty behind a gift, for instance, he begins, simply: “This is a thing called a present. The whole thing starts with a box.” The citizens’ response?
“Is it steel?”
“Is it locked?”
“Is it filled with a pox?”
“It's a bat!
“Will it bend?”
“It's a rat!”
“Will it break?”
“Perhaps it’s the head I found in the lake!”
Jack, unable to articulate the vision of Christmastown - as he himself does not understand it - gives up: “Everyone, please now, not so fast. There's something here that you don't quite grasp…Well, I may as well give them what they want.”
Jack then indulges the citizens of Halloweentown, allowing them to frame the beauty of Halloweentown in terms they can understand: presents, Christmas trees and stockings must be used as objects of terror. Immediately after this meeting, Jack locks himself in his study, trying to discover what he’s missing from the whole equation and why he can’t explain it properly.
I've read these Christmas books so many times
I know the stories, and I know the rhymes
I know the Christmas carols all by heart
My skull's so full, it's tearing me apart
As often as I've read them, something's wrong
So hard to put my bony finger on
Jack sees the enchantment of Christmas. He even “knows the stories” and “knows the rhymes” and carols - our first allusion to songs and stories about Christ’s incarnation. Like Dawkins, however, Jack experiences this all from the outside. His “bony finger” cannot, as C.S. Lewis once put it, “enter in” and “become part of” the enchantment, because Jack can only comprehend the ornamentation of Christmas, not the story of Christ itself. This scene represents the fruitless task of philosophy in a secular age. Without the Christ, immanent philosophy can only ping-pong between relativism (or more specifically nominalism) and materialism (or more specifically essentialism).
Act III: A Santa-Haunted Christmas
But here is the important character turn. Jack - IMPORTANTLY - never resolves the philosophical tension. He merely decides to announce that he will embody the values of Christmastown blindly - "Christmas is OURS!"
Here, Sally is at her most prophetic. She sees that Jack's task is doomed.
I sense there's something in the wind
That feels like tragedy's at hand…
…Although I'd like to join the crowd
In their enthusiastic cloud
Try as I may, it doesn't last
Yet, curiously, her song ends with the words:
And will we ever end up together
No, I think not, it's never to become
For I am not the one
Sally sees that SHE is not the answer Jack is looking for, ultimately. She closes her haunting melody with: "I am not the one." Why? I think this is a hint that Sally knows romance cannot fill the existential void in Jack...much in line with Ernest Becker's critique of the post-religious west, as we’ve put all the force of our religious impulses on the hope of finding “the one” - a worldview Becker calls "apocalyptic romance". Sally disavows this, as well as Jack’s hopeless secular naivety.
The task she’s critiquing? Jack’s "cultural renewal project": he recruits others within the immanent frame to make toys to spread "Christmas cheer". But in order to accomplish this task, he also must capture Santa Clause - our Christ figure - and LITERALLY BURY HIM UNDERGROUND. Interestingly, as Santa Clause is being captured, he quotes the angelic announcement of the gospel in the book of Luke: "Haven't you ever heard of peace on earth and goodwill toward men?" The demonic figures scream emphatically: "NO!", then toss him in the grave.
Also of interest: notice how Santa is the exact opposite of Jack. Jack is a human with no flesh. Santa is the fleshiest human you can imagine, ala Ezekiel 37:“Prophesy to these bones...I will attach tendons to you and...you will come to life."
With the Christ-figure “safely” buried with the Oogie-Boogie Man - the Satanic figure in the film - Jack can now commence his cultural renewal project: Jack is free to "re-create" Christmas within the immanent frame. But even in the name of love and goodwill (Christian language), he in fact spreads violence and terror. The "gifts" he brings are curses on the citizens of Christmastown. This is representative of Alasdair MacIntyre's work on secular notions of justice: "Whose justice?" Here, Jack is using Christian terminology, but without a transcendent definition of love/justice/mercy, his social project is doomed to failure.
Act III ends when the citizens of Christmastown turn on Jack, and he falls from the sky, and LITERALLY LANDS ON AN ANGEL HOLDING UP THE SCRIPTURES.
Act IV: Re-Enchanting Halloweentown
Here, importantly, Jack is gracefully caught by the very transcendent framework he's been looking for. He admits his project was doomed. Tellingly the Genesis 3 language of "dust" is used heavily in the next two scenes. Jack sings, sitting upon the graceful angels and the scriptures: "In a million years they'll find me, only dust and plaque". Immediately after, the oogie-boogie man taunts him: "ashes to ashes and dust to dust!" (remember the “death” theme of the characters in the imminent frame at the beginning of the film). Jack here admits - in a way reminiscent of Ecclesiastes - that death makes his life and cultural projects a kind of "dust", destined to be swept away in the immanent framework: "Why does nothing turn out as it should?"
Yet Jack now ALSO understands that he CANNOT be the center of things. So...he returns to the grave to pursue the Christ figure he's buried: Santa Clause. Santa Clause now literally RISES FROM THE GRAVE, conquering the figure representing death/satan: the Oogie Boogie man. At this point, we think the answer is for Jack to return to the immanent frame of Halloweentown, relegated to Sally’s sober perspective: life has no transcendent meaning after all, at least not for us.
But instead, something magical happens: Santa brings snow to Halloweentown.
Jack sees that only Santa - the Christ-figure - can hold together the values he envies. As the Christ-figure sprinkles His "grace" - snow - upon Halloweentown, we see the members of Halloweentown come to a dawning understanding of the meaning of Christmas, for the first time. Tellingly, the demonic Lock, Shock and Barrel scurry into hiding. The film closes with a uniting of Jack and Sally upon the iconic hill of Jack’s Lament, now transformed by Christ's grace (it's covered in snow). The love between them is now a fruitful possibility with Jack now dethroned, and Santa - the Christ figure - enthroned after conquering death.
Conclusion
The Nightmare Before Christmas expresses the longing we all feel to live in a world “re-enchanted” by Christ. Flannery O’Conner once called the South “Christ-haunted”. Much like Jack, each of us is haunted by Christ, simultaneously compelled by His enchantment yet repelled at the idea that we are not at the center of things. It is only when we recognize that Christ alone can re-enchant our world that the transcendent values of love, beauty and freedom become fruitful possibilities.