Is Nightmare Before Christmas A Halloween Or Xmas Movie? Google May Have An Answer
More than 30 years after its debut, it seems like general audiences may never completely see eye-to-eye on whether "The Nightmare Before Christmas" is a Halloween movie or a Christmas film. While there have been numerous points made in favor of both sides of the argument — including "The Nightmare Before Christmas" director Henry Selick offering his opinion on the matter — no statement has been definitive enough to convince either side to concede. However, a certain revealing statistic from Google may be enough for some to settle the score once and for all. After all, data doesn't lie.
On the r/dataisbeautiful subreddit, u/keshava7 posted a data graph detailing the international Google search trends for "The Nightmare Before Christmas" during the Halloween and Christmas seasons between 2015 and 2019. Interestingly enough, searches for the movie during the Halloween period routinely outperformed those during the Christmas period — more than double in certain years. The takeaway is clear: when it comes to Google users, it seems that a sizable majority considers "The Nightmare Before Christmas" more of a Halloween movie than a Christmas one.
Some users take issue with Google's data
While Google's search analytics for "The Nightmare Before Christmas" indicate that users generally think of the movie as more of a Halloween film than a Christmas one, some users have taken issue with the results of the data. "Presumably there is more competition over Christmas though? As in, since there are more Christmas films than Halloween films, interest in 'The Nightmare Before Christmas' might be more diluted?" u/Rondont commented. "So the graph isn't just a reflection of the content of the film itself, it's reflective of differences in interest over time."
Other users felt like the disparity between searches for "The Nightmare Before Christmas" wasn't the salient point of the data. Indeed, while the graph proves that searches for the movie are highest during the Halloween period, it also indicates that searches regularly spike (even if to a lesser extent) during the Christmas season. For some, that data supports a third option in the debate over whether "The Nightmare Before Christmas" is a Halloween or Christmas movie. "Dichotomy is usually a logical fallacy," u/docious wrote. "It's both."
All in all, a bit of data might not be enough to fully convince some fans of "The Nightmare Before Christmas" to change their minds. As u/MithranArkanere remarked, "This tells us that it's a Christmas movie that people watch on Halloween."