‘On The Fifth Day of Christmas, My True Love Gave To Me…Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas’ (1993)
Tim Burton is something of Christmas ambassador, albeit one with a taste for the Gothic. Like Shane Black, he has a child’s love for the season and a unique way of celebrating it. His masterpiece Edward Scissorhands is the most beautiful modern fairy tale of them all: a corkscrewing of Norman Rockwell’s suburban America culminating in a heartbreaking coda about where Christmas snow comes from. It becomes just that little bit more perfect with every passing year.
Then there’s Batman Returns, which is what might have happened if Fritz Lang had made a Christmas film in 1992 whilst listening to The Velvet Underground’s Venus in Furs on a continuous loop.
However, his most celebrated Christmas gift (I say his, but director Henry Selick might disagree) is this demented stop-motion caper, detailing the devastation wreaked unintentionally when Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King of Halloween Town, decides to relieve Santa of his chores one Christmas. With the added bonus of it being essentially a Danny Elfman musical – “What’s this? / There are children throwing snowballs instead of throwing heads / They’re busy building toys and absolutely no one’s dead” – this is the perfect antidote to anyone who may have been forced to watch Paw Patrol: Pups Save Christmas by an ill-informed young nephew.
