This is Halloween, everybody make a scene Trick or treat till the neighbors gonna die of fright It’s our town, everybody scream In this town of Halloween.

These lines are from “This Is Halloween,” the opening musical number of Tim Burton’s animated film The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993). Danny Elfman wrote the songs and score and also provided the singing voice of Jack Skellington. The song functions as a tour of Halloween Town, introducing its citizens—monsters, ghouls, and trick-or-treaters—who proudly stage scares as a communal ritual. Positioned at the film’s outset, the lyric establishes the town’s identity and sets up the story’s central tension: Jack’s growing dissatisfaction with repeating the same seasonal performance year after year.

The lyric frames Halloween not as a private holiday but as a collective spectacle: “everybody make a scene” and “everybody scream” turn fear into civic celebration. The exaggerated threat—neighbors “gonna die of fright”—signals playful theatricality rather than real violence, emphasizing performance, tradition, and identity. By insisting “It’s our town,” the speakers claim ownership of a culture built on controlled transgression, where frightening others is both art and social duty. As an opening chorus, it also foreshadows the film’s later question: what happens when a community (and its star performer, Jack) tries to step outside the role that defines it?