Skip to content
Answering Your Questions About Reactor: Right here.
Sign up for our weekly newsletter. Everything in one handy email.
When one looks in the box, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the cat.

Patrick Stewart’s Monologues on the Nightmare Before Christmas Soundtrack Make Perfect Bookends to the Tale

Reactor

Home / Patrick Stewart’s Monologues on the Nightmare Before Christmas Soundtrack Make Perfect Bookends to the Tale
Movies & TV The Nightmare Before Christmas

Patrick Stewart’s Monologues on the Nightmare Before Christmas Soundtrack Make Perfect Bookends to the Tale

By

Published on December 16, 2013

All fans of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas know that the film begins with a few words of rhyme: “’Twas a long time ago, longer now than it seems/in a place that perhaps you have seen in your dreams…” This is fitting because Burton’s inspiration for the entire project was a full parody he wrote of The Night Before Christmas.

But did you know that opening rhyme was longer at first? Those who have the Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack get a special treat: Patrick Stewart reading the opening monologue, and then another to close out the tale. And they sort of make the movie perfect.

Here’s is the opening monologue, which extends beyond the first lines of the film, setting up the world a little more clearly….

And then the best part, the closing monologue:

While the movie does end beautifully just as it is, the final monologue puts the whole adventure in such lovely perspective, particularly on those last lines—

And I asked old Jack, do you remember the night
When the sky was so dark, and the moon shone so bright?
When a million small children pretending to sleep
Nearly didn’t have Christmas at all, so to speak?
And would, if you could, turn that mighty clock back
To that long fateful night—now think carefully, Jack!
Would you do the whole thing all over again,
Knowing what you know now, knowing what you knew then?
And he smiled like the old Pumpkin King that I knew,
Then turned and asked softly of me… “Wouldn’t you?”

Which is really the moral of the story condensed down to its purest form. No matter how terrible the whole ordeal seemed at the time, Jack’s journey to rediscover himself left everyone better for it. So when something is missing, seek out your bliss—you might discover everything you wanted wasn’t quite so far away.

Super secret extra bonus: Patrick Stewart reading Tim Burton’s original Nightmare Before Christmas poem—which features only Jack, Zero, and Sandy Claus as named characters.


Emmet Asher-Perrin used to listen to that soundtrack on repeat. Forever. You can bug her on Twitter and read more of her work here and elsewhere.

About the Author

About Author Mobile

Emmet Asher-Perrin

Author

Emmet Asher-Perrin is the News & Entertainment Editor of Reactor. Their words can also be perused in tomes like Queers Dig Time Lords, Lost Transmissions: The Secret History of Science Fiction and Fantasy, and Uneven Futures: Strategies for Community Survival from Speculative Fiction. They cannot ride a bike or bend their wrists. You can find them on Bluesky and other social media platforms where they are mostly quiet because they'd rather to you talk face-to-face.
Learn More About Emmet
Subscribe
Notify of
guest
3 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments