Happy Life Day…or something

🎵 You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Malla
Comet and Cupid and Donner and Itchy
But do you recall
The most famous Wookiee of all?🎵 

Wait, what? 

Lumpy is neither a reindeer nor the most famous Wookiee!  That honor goes to Lumpy’s father Chewbacca.  Oh, you didn’t know Chewie has a son?  He also has a frazzled wife named Malla and a  cantankerous father named Itchy.  They are anxiously waiting for Chewbacca to stop smuggling and generally galavanting around that far, far away galaxy with Han Solo and come home to celebrate Life Day. 

What is Life Day?  It’s a day to celebrate family and friends, and to hope for galactic peace or something.  All you have to do is throw on a robe, grab a glowing sphere and go into the light like Carol Anne in POLTERGEIST.  Then you’ll find yourself in some rocky, desolate area where Princess Leia Organa warbles a classic Life Day ditty, while Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Chewbacca, C-3PO and R2-D2 look on with varying degrees of interest. 

Before you get to hang with STAR WARS Legacy Characters in Life Day Limbo, you have to pay your dues by spending way too much time with Malla, Itchy and Lumpy.  You will have to sit through a cooking lesson with Malla and a multiple-armed alien Julia Child, played by Harvey Korman.  You’ll have to wonder what the hell is going on when Itchy gets overly excited by a trippy virtual reality song performed by Diahann Carroll.  Then there is Lumpy.  You will be forced to watch Lumpy refuse to do the dishes, take out the trash, try to steal a cookie and generally behave like a bratty prototype of an Ewok.  

Malla wishes she had used Wookiee birth control 

I honestly don’t remember if I watched THE STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL back in the day, but surely I did.  I mean, I may have been a very little kid, but I was a huge fan.  Maybe I blocked out the experience for the sake of my sanity.  So, my first memorable viewing was in the early 2000’s when I picked up a bootleg VHS copy at a comic book store.  This sketchy copy had all the authentic 1970’s commercials and the “Fighting the Frizzies” news promo.  For worse, or maybe better, the bootleg DVD I ordered from eBay appears to be a somewhat spiffed up print, at least compared to the VHS, that is commercial and frizzy free.  It’s almost what it would be like if George Lucas or Disney+ finally released an official version. 

THE STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL needs to be seen to be believed.  It’s a strange mixture of a made-for-TV movie and a variety show.  Who was the target audience in 1978?  I’m sure my 5-year-old  self would’ve been glued to the television set in a frenzied desire to see more of the characters I saw on the big screen.  I doubt I would’ve cared about Chewbacca’s family, Art Carney as a shopkeeper and Bea Arthur as a bartender at the Cantina.  Though, decades later, Bea Arthur singing a farewell song to drunken aliens is a highlight for me.  

Another highlight is the animated STAR WARS adventure Lumpy covertly watches while Imperial Stormtroopers search their tree house home.  The animation has a funky 70’s look and introduces badass bounty hunter Boba Fett a couple of years before THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK.  This alone makes THE STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL worth watching. 

In conclusion…
Ridiculous, weird and sometimes just plain painful, THE STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL is a time capsule of 1970’s television and a testament to the impact A NEW HOPE had on pop culture.  The fact they got the original cast, sans Alec Guinness, is truly remarkable and is another reason to watch.  So, if you’re in the mood for a certain kind of Yuletide sci-fi cheese, or you’re a STAR WARS completist, THE STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL is the festive tradition you didn’t know you needed…and you can find it on YouTube.  It’s honestly better than some of the more recent theatrical films.  

Chewie agrees with my assessment

Freak Out, 
JLH 

P.S.  Disney+ released THE LEGO STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL in 2020 and it’s a fun, satirical love letter to the original special and the entire STAR WARS universe.  

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