Long Live the Pumpkin Queen: Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas

Sally carries Jack carefully to their bed, then goes to the window to contemplate her situation and the town. When she left, everything was normal. Now it is utterly silent. Despite herself, Sally revels in the quiet. She is not being poked, prodded, and bossed around by people trying to turn her into the kind of queen they want. Her home feels like a home again and not a prison. She can do whatever she wants and be whoever she feels like. The only thing lacking is Jack.

Sally hears a shushing sound and runs to the gates to investigate. Something comes out of the shadows at the end of the street. As it draws nearer, Sally makes of the shape of an old man with a long beard and frizzy hair. He floats along the foot above the ground, wrapped in a cloudy cloak that spills sand from the pockets. He pauses to examine one of the sleeping townspeople, the witch Zeldaborn, and sprinkles more sand over her.

Sally waits for the mysterious figure to go on his way, then she runs upstairs and tries again to wake Jack, begging him to wake up and do something; there’s a monster in the town, but Jack sleeps on. Sally is on her own.

Sally waits until the coast is clear, then slips out and gathers herbs from the garden of Doctor Finkelstein. She brews a potion to wake Jack, but it has no effect. Outside, she hears a drowsy humming, like a lullaby. Then something black glides past the window. Sally scrambles to hide, but it is too late. She sees the old man looking in, crooning that if she comes out, he will give her what she wants—sleep and dreams.

A cloud of sand blows through the window, covering Sally and making her cough. She runs for the front door, but the old man intercepts her there, humming under his breath. He seems less frightening than Sally first thought—just a gentle old man singing songs to soothe jangled nerves. Sally resists the urge to drift off to sleep. Instead, she flees into the house and up the stairs with the old man floating after her. With no other escape, she throws herself from the second-floor window and flees Halloween Town.

Sally flees through silent woods until she reaches the grove of holiday trees. She passes them, searching for the other tree she’d found the previous day. She thinks it might be a safe place to hide, but when she reaches it, she finds the door standing open and realizes she left it that way. She must have let the old man out with his sand and his lullabies. What’s happened to Halloween Town is her fault. She slams the door shut and piles branches against it.

Thinking she might find help or at least advice in one of the other holidays, Sally opens the door to Valentine Town. She senses something wrong immediately, and when she arrives in the town, she finds that everyone there is asleep, just like in Halloween Town. 

Sally’s next stop is Christmas Town, where she finds everyone asleep, just as in Halloween Town and Valentine Town. The same is true for Easter Town, Thanksgiving Town, and Fourth of July Town. Sally is ever more filled with despair at the recognition that this is all her fault; she is the one who opened the door and left it open when she fled.

Arriving in St. Patrick’s Town, Sally finds herself in a maze of paths. She tries several paths, but each one takes her back to her starting point. Finally, Sally abandons the path altogether and takes a direct route toward the town. This time she reaches her destination.

In St. Patrick’s Town, she finds one person awake—a leprechaun who is too quick and clever, he tells her, to be caught by the Sandman. Sally instantly recognizes that the name must refer to the old man who has put everyone to sleep. She tells the leprechaun how she opened the door with the moon on it. He tells her she opened the door to one of the ancient realms, which were around long before any of the holidays existed. Sally remembers seeing a book of stories and folktales about the ancient realms in Doctor Finkelstein’s library. He had taken it away from her before she could read it.

She begs the leprechaun to help her stop the Sandman and save the holiday worlds, but he is preoccupied with finding his pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. He tells her she must go to Dream Town, behind the door with the moon, and find out from the people there how to get the Sandman back where he belongs. He gives her a four-leaf clover from Saint Patrick’s Town, which is supposed to be especially lucky.

Having no other choice, Sally confronts the moon-carved door. She feels she is not up to this task. She feels more like the fool of the story than the hero. She steps through the doorway and finds herself standing on fleecy ground, feeling pleasantly drowsy. Following the path to the forest's edge, she sees lavender fields being harvested by people in pajamas. The people are awake, but when Sally tries to speak to them, they communicate only in poetry or riddles.

She follows the path through the fields to a walled town with sharp metal spikes mounted atop the stone walls. She expects the guards at the gate to stop her, but they behave as though she has every right to be there. The people in the town all seem drowsy until she asks them about the Sandman. Then they hurry away.

Sally sits down on a bench in front of the library. While she is contemplating her responsibility for her situation, a little boy approaches her and gives her a note instructing her to come to the governor’s house. At the governor’s house, the doorman takes her to a sitting room and tells her to wait. Sally is browsing the books on the shelves—all fairy tales, poetry, and bedtime stories.

As she looks at one of the books, she hears a voice behind her and turns to see two ragdoll people just like herself. When Sally has recovered from the shock of discovering that she is not the only one of her kind, they tell her they are her parents.