Hollerin’ About Fake Holidays

Here’s another thing we forgot to bring up on our latest podcast….

The day we recorded our Krampus episode, May 11th, was National Twilight Zone Day. I don’t know who determined this or why, and not even HolidayInsights.com (your one-stop resources for every obscure holiday under the sun) has any clue behind it’s origin. As the site points out, May 11th holds no actual significance in the history of The Twilight Zone, nor for creator Rod Serling. The only episode that originally aired on May 11th was “Young Man’s Fancy,” which honestly isn’t the kind of episode people would throw a party over.

But nonetheless, I went out and did a couple of social media posts about it and hooray, that was fun. Hardly anyone else commented on or even acknowledged the day, though. That seemed odd, because you should never underestimate the power of nerds to profess their love for something on the internet. Especially The Twilight Zone.

Not a week earlier, people fell all over themselves to celebrate Star Wars Day on May 4th, because puns (“May The Fourth Be With You”) are the only currency we have now for establishing pop culture holidays. Sure, Star Wars may have premiered on May 25th, 1977, but there’s hardly anything clever or punny about that particular date. If the internet suddenly discovered that August 5th is the one date on the calendar that alllllllmost sounds like ‘Christmas’, I bet they’d move that holiday in a fuckin’ heartbeat.

A week before Star Wars Day was April 26th: Alien Day. It was the inaugural pop culture holiday invented by Fox’s marketing department to celebrate the Alien movies and also sell off some extant Alien merch. Why April 26th? Because LV-426 is the planet visited in both Alien and Aliens. Actually, I can’t believe nerds hadn’t figured that one out sooner. You’d think that in 35 years anyone, including the studio that made the film, would have come up with that one sooner rather than later.

So sorry, Twilight Zone Day. Your day isn’t as cool as Star Wars Day or Alien Day because your day doesn’t involve puns or easily scheduled numbers.

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About JW

I've written about movies on the internet since 2009. Now mostly into the podcast game, talking about Christmas and movie soundtracks mostly. It's fun.
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