Every November 17, my friend Alex Newborn sends out an e-mail reminding everyone that today in 1978, television gave us the miracle that is the Star Wars Holiday Special. The miracle, really, is that your brain doesn't turn to mush after sitting through it. Or maybe it does, I don't know.

The first time I heard about the Holiday Special was pretty late in the game, some time around 1998 through the SWFA. Of course, who could believe warnings about how bad the telefilm was? We're talking a whole new movie (I use that word in the loosest possible sense) with all the original heroes and actors from Star Wars! A buddy agreed to show me his VHS copy. But before sending it, he prefaced it with this: "Remember, there's no going back. Are you sure you want to watch it?"

His oddly sincere tone took me by surprise, and was in fact slightly chilling. But I was not to be deterred.

Ha ha! and LOL, I answered back! I could only construe his warning as a joke.

But folks who have seen the Holiday Special know better. Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny: folks who have seen the Special know all too well what Yoda meant by those words.

You think I'm joking! Here lies the dilemma of the initiator. It's impossible to communicate the gravity of the threat to your happiness that the Holiday Special represents. How can you take me seriously? It's just a movie, you say. Was Star Wars: A New Hope just a movie? Trust me when I say that the Japanese were clearly inspired to create Ringu as a warning and collective exorcism after the Holiday Special infected that country's unsuspecting citizenry!***

It's impossible to like the Special. The Holiday Special is not one of those movies that is "so bad, it's good." Far, far away from it. A person may like certain parts of it, certainly. I'm partial to the survival of that coward Chief Bast and watching Harrison Ford put on one more Han performance, no matter how labored. And everyone loves the Boba Fett cartoon. But it wasn't worth it. It wasn't worth it! Oh god...

No one, no one can enjoy the Holiday Special. Not most of it, half of it, or any quantity that amounts to advantageous using any known system of value. Defying our last biological bastion against misery, it cannot even be enjoyed on scales of absurdity or irony for long.

The Star Wars Holiday Special IS the Dark Side. You begin watching it, slowly drawn in by the quaintness of its mediocrity. And you're waiting, waiting patiently for it to get better ... only it gets worse. Lameness apparently compounds geometrically; soon you crave only a glimpse of satisfaction, anything to ease the mounting pain--a light at the end of the tunnel!

But this is the death of hope.

When you finally shut off your VCR or DVD player or, god forbid, you make it to the end of the Special, you realize that you've lost your soul in direct proportion to the time you've spent viewing this monsterpiece.

The Star Wars Holiday Special IS the Dark Side. And nothing, nothing can prepare you.

Join us, young Padawan. It is your destiny. ~ Abel G. Peņa

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For those depraved individuals who have already lost their souls to the Special, please check out Alex Newborn's "The Star Wars Holiday Special Fanboy Edition" editorial for one of the funniest things you'll ever read. Also check out www.starwarsholidayspecial.com to relive this hell in true Dantesque fashion.

***As proof, we have the fact that the Japanese-published Star Wars Chronicles was among the first and few officially licensed books to acknowledge the Holiday Special.

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