It’s a debate as old as everyone born in 1993: is The Nightmare Before Christmas a Halloween movie, or does it belong on the holiday-season shelf beside Bad Santa, It’s a Wonderful Life, and Here Cumz Santa.

Sure Jack Skellington has a thing for red fleece and synthetic white beards, but he also spends a good chunk of the movie strutting around a place called Halloween Town looking like someone raised on Vincent Price, John Carpenter films, and everything ever recorded by the Misfits.

Which side of the argument you fall on will decide whether “Spooky Christmas” by the locally spawned Mariah Scary & the Ghoulish Caldrons is something to bookmark for the month where Dead Can Dance, Bauhaus, and Christian Death never leave the turntable, or whether it’s best saved for those nights when the Avalon Dairy Eggnog is flowing and the Yule logs are blazing away in the fireplace.

(Never mind that the locally spawned group—featuring two dudes with the best hair this side of Atlantic Canada—bills itself as "The world's first Halloween themed band to only write songs about holidays, except Halloween". That's clearly some sort of tricky sorcery to throw you off the path to the truth). 

Merry, um, Halloween. And may Santa—or Jack Skellington—be kind enough to bring you the ultra-dreamy Steve Bays and Cary Pratt this year, although hopefully not tacked to the tree Black Christmas-style.