xkcd.WTF!?

Explanation ➲

This is the first of two Christmas comics in a row celebrating Christmas of 2017. The next being 1933: Santa Facts, released upon Christmas Day itself. This was the first time that a year with two Christmas comics had one released as early as December 22nd. Otherwise, it has always been in the range from December 23-26th. (As of 2023 it is still the only such comic released on the 22nd. In 2023 this was also the last release day before Christmas, but the earlier date was not specifically Christmas-themed that year.)

It is making fun of the common trope in popular media that the true meaning of Christmas is about family, friends, and sharing the Christmas Spirit. It subverts the trope by suggesting that once the stories of the "True Meaning of Christmas" become sufficiently common, the real true meaning becomes to spread those stories. Thus the search for the "True Meaning of Christmas" is itself the meaning of Christmas, in a sort of "the journey is the reward" discovery.

In the last panel and title text, "Autometalogolex" is a neologism of Randall's, which can be broken down to its various prefixes and the root:

"Auto-" - Greek meaning "self."

"Meta-" - Greek meaning "after," "beyond," or "in reference to."

"Logo-" - Greek meaning "word" or "speech."

"Lex" - "lexis" is another Greek word meaning "word"; but in this case it is more likely to be a shortening of "lexicon" (another word for dictionary), or perhaps a reference to the process of "lexing" (lexical analysis), part of the process of computer analysis of text.

Thus, "Autometalogolex" would literally mean "A word that refers to itself in the dictionary," or more precisely "the act of looking up the definition of autometalogolex", which leads to a recursion, as all meaning of Christmas stories do. Recursion and self-reference is a recurring theme in xkcd.

The term Autometalogolex might also refer to autological words, words that refer to a property of the word itself. ("noun" is a noun, "pentasyllabic" is pentasyllabic [has 5 syllables]). "Autometalogolex" is a 'meta' version of the looking up (lex) of an autological word.

Cueball finally states that Autometalogolex is his least favorite of Santa Claus's reindeer. This is not among the commonly quoted list of names, that are Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, and Blitzen (although, originally, the last two were known as Dunder and Blixem). There exist various other notable, but less famous, reindeer name-lists that also do not feature this; though, being unfavored, perhaps Autometalogolex was never taken out to be popularized by any of the main chroniclers.

The title text reveals this ninth reindeer as a possible equivalence to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, who was not accepted by the others until Santa had problems that only Rudolph could solve, and asked it to lead the other reindeer pulling the sleigh (despite being previously not highly regarded by them). In this case, implies that the effective outcome of Autometalogolex is one in which a headache is given to Santa, for some unstated but apparently necessary reason. As headaches generally are bad,^{[citation needed]} this might be why Autometalogolex is not normally favored by Santa. But - as in a typical Christmas story, here driven into the absurd realm - should Santa ever desperately need a headache in order to fulfil his seasonal duties, then Autometalogolex would be there to save the day.