Jack Skellington is the Pumpkin King of Halloween Town, the little burg where every day gets treated like—you guessed it—Halloween. Even so, Oct. 31 remains the day townspeople live for, the day an entire year’s worth of preparation comes to fruition. Accordingly, this stop-motion animated film opens with a singing and dancing Halloween exhibition, complete with jack-o’-lanterns, vampires, witches, bats, monsters, ghosts and skeletons. Jack, who lives and breathes Halloween, is the star of the show. And after it’s done, he congratulates his friends and neighbors on creating another spooky spectacular. Come morning, they’re ready to start making plans for next year’s celebration.

But something is wrong. Halloween just doesn’t sparkle like it used to for Jack. It feels old, tired and boring. So he goes for a hike to stimulate his senses. While he’s out and about, he stumbles upon something new: a portal to … Christmas Town. Visiting the land of yuletide glee, Jack is enthralled. And he longs to take the charm of Christmas back to Halloween Town. But how can he communicate the warm joys of Christmas to his neighbors, whose highest goal is to create a good scare? So Jack decides to “do” Christmas himself. He’ll give Santa a year off and take charge of all the trappings. Once his fellow Halloween Town inhabitants collaborate with him on making and delivering gifts to all the children of the world, they’re sure to catch the Christmas spirit, right?

Not so fast. Not only does Jack get everything good-heartedly wrong about Christmas, but the Boogie Man (aka Oogie Boogie) shows up to try to ruin the holiday forever. Jack’ll need the help of his friend Sally, a fellow Halloween Townian (and a cartoon-girl version of Frankenstein’s monster) to keep that from happening.