The Nightmare Before Christmas, I
1SO, I think you hit the nail on the head: Burton, Selick and Elfman, at their very best, balanced in this classic, glorious film.
Part of it has to do with the background. There is a nostalgia to the film, even when I saw it the first time in the theatre. This is because the context is the claymation Christmas specials that many of us grew up on in the 70s and 80s. The most popular of them was Santa Claus is Comin' To Town and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, but NBX draws heavily on two lesser known holiday-themed specials: Here Comes Peter Cottontail and The Year Without a Santa Claus.
Here Comes Peter Cottontail is an origin story of the Easter Bunny, where Peter has to travel through time with a worm companion in order to defeat Iron Tail, the evil bunny. In this travel, Peter goes from one holiday world to another, delivering different kinds of colored eggs, all holiday themed. This, plus Rudolph's Happy New Year, introduces the idea of different holidays having different worlds, all reflecting the different holiday themes. If anyone wanted to see the different worlds, they are found in Peter's story, plus the New Year world in Rudolph's story.
Here, the thought is to bring a consistency to the worlds, with a "wood between the worlds" idea drawn from The Magician's Nephew by C. S. Lewis. A wood with doors allowing one to pass easily from one holiday world to another. Much less clunky than diving through a calendar with a flying worm.