Since it’s not my wish to spoil anyone’s Thanksgiving, I’m warning you a little early this week that Roy and my topic on Friday will be the universally-reviled “Star Wars Holiday Special.” How hated is it? “Star Wars” creator George Lucas once remarked that if he could locate every copy, he would smash them with a hammer. I’m sure you will feel the same.

First aired on CBS television on November 17, 1978 (preempting “Wonder Woman” and “The Incredible Hulk”), the “special” takes a core plot of Chewbacca trying to reach his home planet of Kashyyyk in time to celebrate Life Day with his Wookiee family, and folds it into an improbable variety show format that includes music and comedy perpetrated by Bea Arthur, Art Carney, Diahann Carroll, and Harvey Korman (the kids just love those guys), and an appearance by The Jefferson Starship. I know, right? In the end, Princess Leia sings a Life Day song to the tune of… “Star Wars.” Yes, it’s THAT bad. The SOLE saving grace is an admittedly cool, stylized cartoon that introduces the character of Boba Fett. (This was still two years before “The Empire Strikes Back.”)

The special was met with slack-jawed disbelief by audiences and critics alike. It has never received an authorized release on home video. Quite simply, everyone associated with it wants you to believe that it never happened, that it was a bad dream, an undigested bit of beef, a fragment of underdone potato. But we know better.

George Lucas may wish his holiday folly would just go away, but thanks to the then practically-brand-new technology of VHS, its horribleness has been preserved to be relived again and again on YouTube.

Enjoy your Thanksgiving, because this year Black Friday will be very black indeed. Share your excruciating memories of the “Star Wars Holiday Special” on the next Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner. We begin processing the trauma, livestreamed on Facebook, this Friday evening at 7:00 EST.

https://www.facebook.com/roystiedyescificorner/

How bad can it be? THIS bad: