This is Halloween – The Case Against Haunted Mansion Holiday

Let's digress from Disneyland for a bit to talk about Christmas Creep. Even if you haven't encountered the term before, you're bound to be familiar with the phenomenon: the tendency for retailers to start stocking and advertising their Christmas items earlier and earlier in the year. Is it a new phenomenon, per se? Hard to say. The Peanuts had a gag about a Christmas sale in April as far back as 1974, but when I was a kid in the Eighties, people still rolled their eyes over the fact that tree displays went up the instant Thanksgiving was over.* Now, of course, we're shocked if any store waits that long. The standard is to flip straight from Halloween to Christmas, with poor Thanksgiving relegated to an end cap display.

This is understandable, of course. Both Halloween and Christmas are much bigger moneymaking opportunities than Thanksgiving. For Halloween, people like to buy costumes, elaborate decorations, and loads of candy. For Christmas, they buy elaborate decorations,** candy, occasional costumes, and gifts gifts gifts. Unless you're a supermarket or an airline, Thanksgiving just isn't that much of a boost for you...and if you are a supermarket or an airline, Christmas might still be bigger. On the consumer side of things, Thanksgiving isn't capital-F Fun the way Halloween and Christmas are, so most people are content to let it be eclipsed by its feuding calendrical neighbors.

Halloween itself wasn't always so prominent, of course. I think my generation was the one to decisively say “Screw you, adulthood, we'll keep dressing up if we want,” turning what had previously been thought of mainly as a children's romp day into an all-ages cultural phenomenon...and honestly? In light of Christmas Creep, it's a good thing we did. The prominence of Halloween gives us a stick with which to draw our line in the sand: “No, Wal-Mart, we are not shopping for Christmas yet; we are still celebrating Halloween.” And since it's become so easy to capitalize on Halloween itself, the retailers of America aren't too inclined to fight us on the matter. Don't be fooled by the appearance of fake pine garlands on the shelves in mid-October—those are just there so the transition can be made as quickly as possible once November 1 hits.

Now we can get back to Disneyland, which turns the whole thing upside-down by installing the Haunted Mansion Holiday overlay in September.

Seriously—as of the post date for this blog entry, Jack Skellington has already temporarily ousted the Ghost Host, a situation which will remain in effect for the rest of 2015, and even into 2016 if recent patterns hold. As far as I can recall, this is the earliest it's ever gone into effect, and it's very bad juju. Now, I'm not a Haunted Mansion fangirl purist who is opposed to the holiday overlay on principle—as I've said before, I can tolerate almost any stupid change to any ride as long as it's temporary—but I do have a big problem with this particular change being made this early in the year.

For one thing, if there's one holiday that would be the perfect excuse to promote the Haunted Mansion itself in its original spooky glory, surely it's Halloween, surely? Picture, if you will, an alternate universe where the Ghost Host and his tenants have the run of New Orleans Square at this time of year. Haunted Mansion merchandise events, ghostly face characters, a Haunted Costume Ball, tasteful decorations...it could be amazing! But we live in this universe, where Upper Management's conviction that guests are only interested in familiar movie characters results in a wholesale takeover of the area by the last Tim Burton protagonist not to be played by Johnny Depp in fright makeup, leaving us stuck with ragged pinstriped bows, squishy cartoon skulls, and little to no acknowledgment of the factors that make the Haunted Mansion successful enough to be worth dressing up for the holidays in the first place.

Isn't this supposed to be a classy joint?

To summarize the problem: Disneyland's perfect pre-existing Halloween environment gets overwritten during Halloween by characters and imagery from a non-Halloween movie.

Oh, that hadn't occurred to you? Yeah, The Nightmare Before Christmas is not a Halloween movie. It's cleverly disguised as one, but think about it—the story begins just as Halloween festivities are ending. Even its original release date—October 29, 1993—was a little too late to really take advantage of rising Halloween spirit, while being perfectly timed so that the majority of viewers would see it during the span where it takes place: after Halloween, before Christmas. For goodness' sake, the film is about its principal characters discovering Christmas and learning its true meaning, the most well-worn of all Christmas movie plots. It's a Christmas movie. It's right there in the title.

And the ride overlay knows it's a Christmas movie. No one is celebrating Halloween during Haunted Mansion Holiday. They're setting up jack-o-lanterns and spider webs because it's what they're good at, but it's clearly in honor of Christmas. The front of the Mansion boasts the Christmas countdown clock from the movie, set at 000 Days To—the altered ride takes place on Christmas Day itself.

And even if Nightmare were as much about Halloween as it is about Christmas, installing the overlay for the Halloween season wouldn't be a good idea...because it would be redundant. The motivating logic behind Haunted Mansion Holiday is that The Nightmare Before Christmas combines Christmas themes with spooky Halloween imagery, so it's a good premise for a Christmas overlay of the Haunted Mansion. But as I mentioned above, the Mansion is fine for Halloween just the way it is.

In short, the current schedule for Haunted Mansion Holiday extends Christmas Creep clear back to the Back to School season and lies about it, pretending it's just a bit of Halloween Creep instead, and in the process robs one of Disneyland's greatest achievements of all time of its holiday birthright.

Why aren't more people appalled about this? Is it because they just really really love Jack Skellington, and as far as they're concerned, the more of him, the merrier? Er, scarier? Whatever? If so, then maybe those people should consider this: If Jack*** and his Halloween Town buddies are already fixated on Christmas before the leaves have even really started to turn, then who's taking care of Halloween? The Easter Bunny? Should this year's trick-or-treaters expect hard-boiled eggs and jellybeans in their bags? Will the earth over fresh graves shift and break open to reveal sprouting daffodils?

Actually, that would be hilarious. Tim, Henry, have you guys ever considered doing a sequel?

But absent any such plans on the parts of Mssrs. Burton and Selick, fans of The Nightmare Before Christmas who take its mythos seriously have genuine cause for concern here. Did the Pumpkin King learn nothing from the fiasco he engineered a long time ago (longer now than it seems)? Wasn't the point of the movie that Jack was wrong to appropriate someone else's holiday...but that the experience renewed his enthusiasm for his own purpose? To judge by the presentation of Haunted Mansion Holiday, our well-dressed bundle of pipe cleaners learned precisely the opposite lesson, and with it going up in advance of Halloween, it seems he is not only repeating his mistake (right down to the kidnapping of Santa Claus) but compounding it by neglecting his own holiday in favor of Christmas.

I'll leave it there, before I talk myself out of liking Haunted Mansion Holiday at all. Because I honestly don't mind it in its proper season. It's nice to have something different for a little while, and I love seeing how they update the overlay from year to year, including those fantastic gingerbread houses. Furthermore, The Nightmare Before Christmas is a fine movie, and since its inherent seasonality makes it unsuitable as the basis for a permanent attraction, it's nice that the Imagineers found a place for it during part of the year.

I just wish it weren't there for quite such a big part of the year. After all, if the movie that inspired it is saying anything, it's that bad things happen when holidays with radically different themes get thrown together willy-nilly. Let's hope that some future decision-maker comes to their senses, fights back against Christmas Creep, and gives the Haunted Mansion the Halloween it deserves.

* If you're ever in the mood for something really quaint, listen to the original lyrics to “We Need a Little Christmas” from Mame. Auntie Mame wants to jump-start her Christmas spirit by decorating a week after Thanksgiving...and the other characters in the song consider this outrageously early.

** At this point, it's up in the air whether Halloween or Christmas is the bigger decorating holiday. Christmas has the longer tradition, but Halloween lets you put zombies in your front yard.

*** What is it with New Orleans Square rides being invaded by dudes from movies named Jack?