Happy Star Wars Day from a Galaxy Not So Far Away

By Candy Keane | Geek Mamas on May 4, 2020 • ( 1 Comment )

I usually spend May the 4th celebrating Star Wars while dressed up in a costume at different events around town. This year due to all that COVID-19 business, Star Wars Day will be celebrated at home, by watching Star Wars on TV, most likely in pajamas.

This pic is of me and my son last year at the Jacksonville Main Library’s Comic Con. I wore my female Chewbacca cosplay, and he wore Darth Vader pajamas. I’ve found the easiest way to get him to dress up is to make it as comfortable as possible! I made my outfit, but I bought the official Disney pajamas off Amazon: Darth Vader Pajamas. They run small because PJ’s are supposed to be tight, but they are really cute and totally costume-worthy.

Empire Strikes Back 40th Anniversary

This Star Wars Day marks a special occasion: the 40th anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back, which was released May 21, 1980. I was four years old at the time! The Star Wars universe didn’t become a big thing to me until a few years later with the release of Return of the Jedi, which came with a lot of related toy merchandise. I loved playing with the Ewoks tree house set! My cousins and I spent a lot of time fighting with lightsaber broomsticks on our great-grandmother’s porch, so I have a lot of great childhood memories associated with the movie. My R2-D2 Underoos were a favorite, second only to Wonder Woman.

A Star Wars Life

Star Wars has always been a part of my life because I grew up with it and loved it from a young age. It’s crazy that it ended up being such a big part of my life and basically being the movie that launched my costume business and gave me some minor geek-celeb cred. You can read all about that in the post, My Slave Leia Story, which tells all about how one costume changed so many things.

I love that the movie came back, everything was re-released and the story was continued. I love that I’ll be able to share the entire saga with my son, and hope he loves it too. To be honest, so far he hasn’t been entirely impressed. He’s much more interested in watching other children shoot each other with Nerf guns on YouTube. And I may have been too, if there were choices like that when I was little. But there weren’t, and I was totally enthralled with a galaxy full of space ships, blasters, aliens and a princess that showed girls could kick ass too.