History YMMV / TheStarWarsHolidaySpecial

* VindicatedByHistory: ''Barely''. The special is still universally seen as pretty much the worst ''Star Wars'' story ever and has never even once been challenged for that position, but as the years have gone by, any outright hatred of it among the fandom has pretty much disappeared. It's now generally regarded with bemusement as [[SoBadItsGood a quaint, amusing relic]] of [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness the franchise's early days]], with many of its very basic ideas still being considered canon (in a BroadStrokes way), plus fans and creators alike always being happy to make affectionate jabs at it in later material. The special is generally helped by being terrible but also ''easily ignorable''; its BizarroEpisode nature means that it has basically zero serious impact on anything, and absolutely nothing else in the series requires you to know about it, even stories that directly lift elements from it. Thus, it's relegated to being a harmless oddity rather than CanonDefilement. It helps that the landscape it was produced made variety specials that were not only more pointless, but with some much worse than this.

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** The whole special is memetic in how awful it is. George Lucas's seething hatred of it is also rather memetic.

* VindicatedByHistory: ''Barely''. The special is still universally seen as pretty much the worst ''Star Wars'' story ever and has never even once been challenged for that position, but as the years have gone by, any outright hatred of it among the fandom has pretty much disappeared. It's now generally regarded with bemusement as [[SoBadItsGood a quaint, amusing relic]] of [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness the franchise's early days]], with many of its very basic ideas still being considered canon (in a BroadStrokes way), plus fans and creators alike always being happy to make affectionate jabs at it in later material. The special is generally helped by being terrible but also ''easily ignorable''; its BizarroEpisode nature means that it has basically zero serious impact on anything, and absolutely nothing else in the series requires you to know about it, even stories that directly lift elements from it. Thus, it's relegated to being a harmless oddity rather than CanonDefilement.

* EvilIsSexy: Boba Fett, as he usually is.

* RetroactiveRecognition: The special was Don Francks' voice acting debut, being the first voice of Boba Fett in the animated segment, who would go on to be better known as the voice actor behind Sabretooth in ''WesternAnimation/XMenTheAnimatedSeries'' and Mok Swagger in ''WesternAnimation/RockAndRule''.

* {{Narm}}: The whole thing, but special mention must be given to the actor cameos and the attempt at "warmhearted" holiday cheer at the end - Han, Luke, C-3PO, and Chewie are supposed to be moved by Leia's song of hope, but look stoned/bored out of their minds. Considering that Carrie Fisher was whacked off her skull on drugs while making this special, they probably ''were''.

* VindicatedByHistory: ''Barely''. The special is still universally seen as pretty much the worst ''Star Wars'' story ever and has never even once been challenged for that position, but as the years have gone by, any outright hatred of it among the fandom has pretty much disappeared. It's now generally regarded with bemusement as [[SoBadItsGood a quaint, amusing relic]] of [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness the franchise's early days]], with many of its very basic ideas still being considered canon (in a BroadStrokes way), plus fans and creators alike always being happy to make affectionate jabs at it in later material. The special is generally helped by being terrible but also ''easily ignorable''; its BizarroEpisode nature means that it has basically zero serious impact on anything, and absolutely nothing else in the series requires you to know about it, even stories that directly lift elements from it. Thus, it's relegated to being a harmless oddity rather then CanonDefilement.

* WhatDoYouMeanItWasntMadeOnDrugs:
** At least in Creator/CarrieFisher's case, it was. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXcb7VPw59s&t=1m14s Watch for yourself.]]
** Bruce Vilanch has admitted that he was heavily using cocaine while helping to write the special.
** In [[https://tv.avclub.com/and-introducing-chewbacca-s-family-case-file-30-t-1798235133 a column]] about the special, Creator/NathanRabin half-jokes that it was "ultimately written and directed by a sentient bag of cocaine."

* UnintentionalPeriodPiece:
** Let's just say this part of the ''Franchise/StarWars'' saga hasn't aged nearly as well as the original trilogy. Basically, if you ever doubted that ''Star Wars'' began in TheSeventies... this should prove it. Conclusively.
** The versions which retain the original commercials and news segments add to it. The toy commercials have to be the nadir of this - the "Trailtracker" and "Tobor" were probably innovative when they debuted, but to children of today they might as well be old Marx tin toys. Not that the other commercials (Union-made underwear! Ma Bell! Fake-wood-paneled Mercury station wagons!) are any less dated.
** The special also aired the same night [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kampiles William Kampiles]] was sentenced for espionage, and UsefulNotes/LeonidBrezhnev admitted the Soviet Union had tested a NeutronBomb (in violation of a treaty) but never put it into production. The news report about these events is included with other commercials on some versions of the special.

** Creator/MarkHamill was still recovering from a car accident that required extensive facial surgery, so he ends up a rare live-action human actor example. The makeup needed to cover his scars made him look like a [[Franchise/{{Barbie}} Ken]] doll.

* FanonDiscontinuity: If there's one thing all fans and creators of ''Star Wars'' can agree on, it's that this thing ''never happened''. Of all the things that Lucas himself declared [[CanonDiscontinuity non-canon]], well before Disney purchased Lucasfilm, the special was the only one that didn't contradict the Original Trilogy. [[note]](Technically, it was listed as "Secondary Canon"; despite the name, this was the fourth level of canonicity, as low as you could go without being outright non-canon. At the time, Secondary Canon was to be "used or ignored as suits the author". Basically, the special was adopted as canon by way of BroadStrokes - Luke, Han, and Leia all came to visit Chewie's family on Life Day, but they most certainly ''did not take part in a crappy variety show as they did so!'')[[/note]] It was also very deliberately excluded from the Disney canon, [[CanonImmigrant with the apparent exception of Chewie's family]] according to ''Literature/AftermathEmpiresEnd''. Chef Gormaanda, the four-armed chef woman played by Harvey Korman is also mentioned in ''Star Wars: The Life Day Cookbook''.

* BileFascination: ''Infamously so'', thanks in no small part to its underground status and the hatred it has received from [[CreatorBacklash George Lucas]] himself and some of those involved. Those who've seen it no doubt consider it a miracle that the franchise survived this train wreck.

* VindicatedByHistory: ''Barely''. The special is still universally seen as pretty much the worst ''Star Wars'' story ever and has never even once been challenged for that position, but as the years have gone by, any outright hatred of it among the fandom has pretty much disappeared. It's now generally regarded with bemusement as [[SoBadItsGood a quaint, amusing relic]] of [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness the franchise's early days]], with many of it's very basic ideas still being considered canon (in a BroadStrokes way), plus fans and creators alike always being happy to make affectionate jabs at it in later material. The special is generally helped by being terrible but also ''easily ignorable''; it's BizarroEpisode nature means that it has basically zero serious impact on anything, and absolutely nothing else in the series requires you to know about it, even stories that directly lift elements from it. Thus, it's relegated to being a harmless oddity rather then CanonDefilement.

* UnfortunateCharacterDesign: Chef Gormaanda looks like [[WesternAnimation/{{Cinderella}} Lady Tremaine]] wearing {{blackface}}.

* TookTheBadFilmSeriously:
** Bea Arthur, alone among all the big-name guest stars. To her credit, she's talented enough to elevate her sequence into something watchable and almost poignant. She was also no stranger to variety shows of the era, so she knew how to adapt her DeadpanSnarker mode to the role. Her own comment on the special years later was that she hadn't been keeping up with ''Franchise/StarWars'' and its massive cultural impact at the time, thinking of the gig as just singing a musical number to "a bunch of people with funny heads."
** Averted '''hard''' by everyone else, including the regular ''Star Wars'' actors. In particular, Carrie Fisher is obviously drugged out of her mind, and poor Harrison Ford seems like he's been drained of his soul by the end of it.