Holidays are some of the most exciting, fun days of the year and bring joy to many people. The only problem is, some of these so-called ‘holidays’ aren’t actually holidays.

Holidays should have historical significance or religious significance to multiple different groups. In fact, according to the Oxford Dictionary, a holiday is a day of festivity or recreation when no work is done. This means Star Wars Day doesn’t even count as a holiday.

May 4, Star Wars Day, where fans dress up and watch movies from the series, does not meet these requirements. It’s absolutely absurd for an entire day of the year to be dedicated to a single element of pop culture. Imagine seeing people walking around dressed as and acting like zombies, or a bunch of Super Marios running down the street– it’s insane.

Unlike Martin Luther King Jr. Day or Veterans Day, which are both dedicated to historical events important to the United States, Star Wars Day is dedicated to a series of movies and shows. The worst part is, Star Wars Day arguably gets more attention than the aforementioned holidays. Schools will sell shirts based on Star Wars, but they likely won’t do much in terms of World Creativity and Innovation Day – ironic when many students will likely be exploring creative industries.

We also have to consider that if we have one day dedicated to a large part of pop culture, we should also honor other parts. For example, the popular television show Sesame Street, which has influenced people since 1969, gets zero recognition. It’s interesting to think that despite everything out there, Star Wars gets its own day dedicated to it.

This goes back to defining what a holiday is, which, as I stated before, are days which should have historical or religious significance to multiple different groups across the world or the United States. However, even if Star Wars Day is considered historically significant, it wouldn’t make sense because the first Star Wars media to release on May 4 was in 2021. In fact, Los Angeles declared May 25 as Star Wars Day in 2007, rendering the May 4 date useless.

Star Wars Day is too subjective and not relevant enough to most people for it to be truly recognized as what I’d consider a ‘true’ holiday. Instead, it’s more of a celebration than anything. This means it shouldn’t be recognized by schools or companies, but instead by employees and students.

There are a lot of celebrations that call themselves holidays. However, not all of these are holidays; nobody’s celebrating National Barefoot Day or International Caps Lock Day. Star Wars Day isn’t a real holiday and we should put our focus on celebrating our heritage, religions and past accomplishments.