The Nightmare Before Christmas is a classic Halloween/Christmas movie (I will not enter a debate with you; it is a movie for both holidays and can be watched September through Christmas, the end) and, for good reason, has become a major cultural phenomenon. People are straight-up obsessed with this movie, and a Jack Skellington and Sally family costume is almost guaranteed to pop up at a trunk-or-treat or on Halloween night. But listen, I have one major hang-up with everyone’s love for this movie, and it’s the truth: Jack Skellington sucks, and anybody who says Jack and Sally are goals must not be watching the same movie as me.

If Jack Skellington was a person in 2024, he’d be a Twitter bro. He’s a mansplainer, a “visionary” who only wants to follow the vision he has in his brain, regardless of how it affects anyone and everyone around him. He’s literally The Pumpkin King — a revered icon in his home of Halloween Town. People love him. They’re absolutely obsessed with him and will do anything he says. When he’s missing the day after Halloween, the whole town loses their mind trying to find him.

And this whiny little b*tch is off trying to steal another town’s holiday.

I love The Nightmare Before Christmas. I grew up watching it; it was always a favorite in our household. My three daughters love it, too, and the first time we took our oldest to Disney World, the only souvenir she wanted was a plush version of the Clown with the Tear-Away Face from the opening song. We have a Zero hanging from our bush out front every Halloween.

But Jack Skellington is the worst.

He’s bored… from being KING of his entire TOWN. He’s got that woe-is-me vibe, the “I’m so much smarter than any of you, and I’m just absolutely filled with rage at having to be part of your world.” It makes sense why so many emo girls of my era loved him and called themselves Sally to their own Jack-like boyfriends — Jack acts exactly like a high school boy who has only ever been told how wonderful he is and how all of his ideas are the best, no matter what anyone says.

When people suggest to him that maybe this idea isn’t so great, he loses it. Nobody trusts him; everyone’s against him. Can’t they all see that he knows best? He drags all of them into his terrible idea, ruining two towns in the process.

His own love interest in the movie, Sally, gets zero attention from him unless he needs her to do something for him until the very end of the movie. At no point is he acting like a doting partner back to her; it’s just her running after him and being like, “Hey, I think you might be ruined if you try this?” And he’s like, “I need you to sew me my Santa costume, thank you!”

The man *kidnaps* Santa Claus because he’s so sure he can do this holiday (that he just learned about) better than the man who’s been doing it forever.

Jack Skellington is peak mediocre white dude assuming he’s better than everyone. He talks over you at meetings. He ignores your ideas and then brings them up to your boss later as if he came up with them on his own. He assumes that if you don’t like his idea, you’re too idiotic to understand his big, beautiful brain.

Jack Skellington literally almost ruins his entire town — where people live — because he’s so sure that taking something that doesn’t belong to him will fix all of his ennui. And what about the poor residents of Christmas Town? They just have to have their own holiday completely ruined by an a**hole? Sally, there are Red Flags everywhere, boo. Get out of there.

Even after he’s nearly killed and shot down from the sky in his makeshift sled, he still acts all mopey and weepy before realizing maybe Halloween isn’t so bad after all. He learned zero lessons. In the end, not only does Santa bring a snowfall to Halloween Town and have to reassure Jack that Christmas can be saved, but Jack still gets the girl.

Jack Skellington, you’re the worst of society. Stay in Halloween Town, Pumpkin King, and maybe listen to Sally once in a while.