The Nightmare Before Christmas: Part 1

 I was watching The Nightmare Before Christmas and there was so much to unpack from it. This time around, I am going to focus on two of the main characters, Jack and Sally.

Jack, the Pumpkin King, is the leader of Halloween town. He becomes disillusioned with his life and goes to find something new that will fill this void that has opened up. This is when he discovers the other holidays, especially Christmas. He does not waste anytime going back and sharing his new found discovery with the whole town. Now up to this point, everything seems to be going okay. I mean, I love seeing Jack so in awe about everything he sees in Christmas town, as seen and heard in his song What’s This. This is the kind of wonder God talks about when we are supposed to be like children to enter the Kingdom of God, but that is a totally different topic. When Jack rushes to spread the word about his discovery, this can be compared to our lives. We can be like this when we first learn about who Jesus is and decide to enter into a relationship with him. We tell everyone we can about what Jesus has done in us and how he has changed our life. We now have hope, joy, and peace where none existed. Or we are like this when we hear God reveal something to us. We go to our friends and tell them all about it.

The problem isn’t sharing the experience or getting excited about it, we are supposed to tell people what God is doing in us. It’s what may happen next that is the problem. So when Jack goes back home to Halloween town, he decides that he needs to be the one to run Christmas this year. His pride comes out and he takes it upon himself to get the town to understand what Christmas is and to actually try to improve Christmas. With his little understanding about how Christmas works and what it is, he thinks he can do the job. When we let pride take over, it can never end well for us. The Bible talks about pride in Proverbs 16:18, “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.” (NIV) We sometimes think that we can do something God has told us to do in our own strength. We go to tell people about this Jesus we met thinking that we can explain who Jesus is with our own words. If you haven’t seen this movie then **SPOILER ALERT** Jack goes into town, giving his gifts and doing what he thinks is supposed to be done on Christmas. It ends up horribly with the world knowing he was an imposter, but thinking he was trying to ruin Christmas. His intentions didn’t get across to them, only his actions. When we try to follow our own plans, use our own strength, make decisions from our own understanding, we will lead ourselves to destruction. Philippians 4:13 says, “For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength.” (NLT) Often, we read the I can do everything part and totally ignore that it’s a conditional promise. We can only do everything when it’s through the strength Jesus gives us. And once we rely on God, his plans work for our good.

Since I spent so much time on Jack, I will save talking about Sally in a future blog post. Thanks for reading!

-Mysterious ShieldMaiden