Celebrate THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS

The Nightmare Before Christmas (also known as Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas) is a 1993 American stop-motion animated musical dark fantasy Halloween-Christmas film directed by Henry Selick, and produced and conceived by Tim Burton. It tells the story of Jack Skellington, the King of “Halloween Town” who stumbles through a portal to “Christmas Town” and decides to celebrate the holiday. Danny Elfman wrote the songs and score, and provided the singing voice of Jack. The principal voice cast also includes Chris Sarandon, Catherine O’Hara, William Hickey, Ken Page, Paul Reubens, Glenn Shadix, and Ed Ivory.

The Nightmare Before Christmas originated in a poem written by Burton in 1982 while he was working as an animator at Walt Disney Feature Animation. With the success of Vincent in the same year, Burton began to consider developing The Nightmare Before Christmas as either a short film or 30-minute television special to no avail. Over the years, Burton’s thoughts regularly returned to the project, and in 1990, he made a development deal with Walt Disney Studios. Production started in July 1991 in San Francisco; Disney released the film through Touchstone Pictures because the studio believed the film would be “too dark and scary for kids”.

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The letters in a name or phrase can form many other words. Several descriptive lexagrams can be made from them and, when place together, can create a biographical perspective. A lexagram (or lexigram) is a form of wordplay where the letters in a name or phrase are shuffled to create new words. These new words make short statements that, ideally, describe the original term. For example, the word ASTRONOMICAL has letters to make the words STAR, SOLAR, and CORONA, as well as to create each word in the phrases AN ASTRAL SAILOR IN NASA and ROMANTIC MOONLIT MARTIAN CANALS. Look for where the letters in each word can be found in ASTRONOMICAL. To make a lexagram, find words hidden in the letters of your name or a short phrase, then use those terms to make sentences that describe the original name. To make it easy to read, the original phrase and any words found within it are CAPITALIZED.

When searching for words-within-words, shuffling the sequence of letters in the name or phrase is very helpful. While an online generator is great to quickly obtain a list of candidate words which are valid for lexagrams or anagrams, there is much fun to be found in searching for words yourself! Changing the sequence of the letters in a phrase give our brains a fresh perspective on the situation. New words will seem to jump out after simply re-arranging the letters into a new pattern. Rearrange the letters carefully and find new words. Continue exploring by studying the sequences of letters in this name.

Make your own lexagrams. Read about it and look for key words hidden in the letters of the phrase.