November 17 is the commonly accepted date of Life Day, the vacation that in accordance with Star Wars lore originated in Chewbacca’s Wookiee tradition after which unfold to the remainder of the galaxy.
It was first launched within the notorious “Star Wars Vacation Particular,” a tv particular broadcast on CBS on November 17, 1978. The particular was so dangerous, and out of the tone of the unique film that had premiered the earlier 12 months, it was rapidly buried and ignored by the gatekeepers of official Star Wars canon.
It is unbelievable that George Lucas adopted up his 1977 blockbuster Star Wars, a masterpiece of pacing, tone, world-building, and progressive particular results, only a 12 months later with this particular, which is boring, slow-moving, inconsiderate, low cost, and slapdash, even by the requirements of Nineteen Seventies selection exhibits (which is saying so much).
However throughout the a long time earlier than the YouTube period during which it was just about unattainable to see (I watched it with my children at a Museum of Broadcasting), it turned beloved, or a minimum of the thing of fascination, as a campy anomaly all through Star Wars fandom.
The vacation is barely defined within the particular, however Star Wars students have pieced collectively varied tales and theories based mostly on unpublished background materials ready for the particular and transcribed interviews with George Lucas.
An intensive historical past of the vacation is at StarWars.com, hyperlink right here. In fact, the weirdest story concerning the vacation’s”s Wookiee origins comes from Lucas himself:
“[Life Day] was a hallucinogenic expertise. They [Wookiees] used to chew a sure form of root, and they’d all freak out and expertise this communal type of hallucinatory expertise. A number of the households nonetheless use that, however because it makes you sick afterward, many use the environmental transporter.”
I assume you possibly can have fun the vacation immediately by watching the particular, in case you can stand it. It could be boring and… lifeless, however a minimum of when your eyes and/or ears soften, you possibly can quick ahead to the Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fisher cameos and the 70s-tastic visitor stars, like Bea Arthur, Artwork Carney, and Harvey Korman.
Different methods to have fun might be with hallucinogenics (which I am unable to suggest), watching dangerous dancing and juggling to ear-cringingly horrible music in your hologram platform (see 8:20 within the particular), or exchanging items at your Kashyyyk tree of life.
h/t: Tom Tomorrow