2008 Christmas Special
2008 Christmas Special
The 2008 XKCD Christmas Special Due to the slowing economy, we could only afford to produce the prime-numbered panels. You should be able to infer the missing parts of the story easily enough. We apologize for the inconvenience. [The first panel is blank.] [Megan carrying Christmas lights and Cueball watching.] Megan: I'm going to one-up those Christmas light displays on YouTube. [Megan thinking.] Megan: Hmm. Needs more flair. Do you know what happens when you fire sodium pellets into a snowbank? Cueball: No. Megan: Me neither. [The next panel is blank.] [Megan sitting in front of a console.] Megan: Whoops, one of the Arduino control boards sublimated. Megan: If only I could make it self-repairing... [The next panel is blank.] Megan: Shit. The system has become sentient. Cueball: Friggin' Python. System: GRAAARR! [The next three panels are blank.] [Megan showing laptop to Cueball.] Megan: But according to this email forward, Santa is secretly a Muslim! Cueball: It explains everything! [The next panel is blank.] Megan: Okay, the cloned raptors are hunting the last of the cyborgs. We're safe. Cueball: Are you sure you thought this through? [The next three panels are blank.] [Two couples appear in this next panel.] Cueball: Are the raptors contained? Ponytail: Sure. Unless they figure out how to build lightsabers. [The next panel is blank.] [Guy with hat fighting with a raptor using lightsabers.] Cueball: It's all right. I've got her. [Lightsaber appears from behind.] Snap-hiss! Cueball: ...Clever girl. [The next three panels are blank.] [Bill Gates is holding a weapon over Santa's body. The two girls are watching.] Megan: Great. Bill Gates kills Santa. Bill Gates: I thought it was Stallman with a dyed beard. [The next five panels are blank.] [Danish and Black Hat are looking at a tree.] Danish: Where did you get this Christmas tree? Black Hat: Nowhere. Danish: Did you cut down the Yggdrasil? Black Hat: ...Maybe. [The next panel is blank.] [Megan and Cueball holding hands and looking at reader.] Merry Christmas from XKCD <3 [The last panel is blank.]

This comic is the xkcd Christmas Special from the year 2008. The prologue states that due to the 2008 financial crisis , only very few images of the strip could be produced, leaving the others to be blacked out. It is therefore left to the reader to reconstruct the whole story based on the given images. While it is claimed that the reconstruction should be rather easy, the complicated and abstruse plot-line makes it nearly impossible to fill the gaps. Any attempt at inferring the missing images would therefore be largely guesswork. The comic features the well-known xkcd characters getting involved in a strange fight with cyborgs and raptors on Christmas Eve.
The line "We apologize for the inconvenience." is possibly a reference to the famous book series The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams . It appears there as God's Final Message to His Creation, written in letters of fire on the side of the Quentulus Quazgar Mountains.
Panel 2: Megan strives to outdo some Christmas lights she has seen on YouTube.
Panel 3: Dissatisfied with her work, Megan is thinking about alternative ways improve her light arrangement. The idea of firing Sodium pellets into snow is probably a bad one, as Sodium reacts exothermically with water and may, in large amounts, induce explosions.
Panel 5: Probably still obsessed with the idea of creating a large and impressive light display, Megan has constructed an electronic device with an Arduino processor, perhaps to make the light chain show patterns. However, the amount of energy she used was apparently too high, causing one of the control boards to sublimate- go directly from a solid to a gaseous state without an intermediate liquid phase. She then wishes she could make the system self-repairing.
Panel 7: Megan's device has developed artificial intelligence , allowing it to feel. This is presumably a result of Megan attempting to make the device self-repairing. This common trope in science-fiction works usually leads to the system's attempting to eradicate its creator. Cueball attributes the emergence of a personality to awesome ease and power of programming in Python .
Panel 11: Out of context, this panel introduces the idea of Santa Claus being a Muslim . This may be a reference to the persistent Internet rumors that Barack Obama is a Muslim, though he declares himself to be a Christian. However, the statement could also relate to the fact the Santa Claus is usually displayed with a large beard, which is sometimes also sported by conservative Muslims.  Or it could just be non-sensical.
Panel 13: At this point the self-aware Christmas light control systems has apparently released cyborgs that tried to kill Megan and Cueball. In order to repel the cyborgs, they have cloned Velociraptors . Cueball expresses doubt whether that was really a good idea. Velociraptors appear frequently in xkcd, as seen in these comics
Panel 17: As predicted, the raptors have gone wild, but Megan, Cueball and the two smaller characters (perhaps their children) managed to cage the dinosaurs. They believe themselves safe unless the raptors learn how to build lightsabers . This is a reference to a line in Jurassic Park where the main characters believe themselves safe, unless the raptors can learn how to open doors.
Panel 19: The raptors have indeed succeeded with constructing lightsabers and must now be fought. The "Clever girl" is a reference to a line from Jurassic Park where the raptors outflank (and kill) one of the human characters wearing a similar hat.
Panel 23: IT billionaire Bill Gates has mistakenly killed Santa Claus, possibly in a sword fight. He claims to have mistaken him for Richard Stallman , a prominent free software activist. (Gates strongly opposes the idea of free software and is therefore considered an antagonist by many of its supporters.) The most striking resemblance between Stallman and Santa Claus is probably the long and untamed beard. Comic 225 is one of the most famous xkcd comics and features Stallman involved in a sword fight.
Panel 29: Megan, possibly Danish , asks Black Hat where he obtained the enormously large christmas tree that can be seen on the right side of the picture. It is implied that he logged Yggdrasil , a giant ash tree in Norse mythology. According to tradition, Yggdrasil is the world tree representing the whole of creation and holding together the cosmological structure.
Panel 31: Randall wishes Merry Christmas to all xkcd readers.
The title text refers to panel 7. In Python, modules are imported using the "import module " syntax. Skynet is a self-aware artificial intelligence system featured in the Terminator film series as the main antagonist. Importing the skynet module might therefore account for Megan's system's developing an evil personality.
Note that this comic was first published in another version that had panel 29 as panel 27 and the "Merry Christmas from xkcd" message at the bottom. As 27 is not a prime number , the current version was published in lieu of the erroneous one.
It has been observed that the top left nine panels form a Glider in Conway's Game of Life . The glider is sometimes used as an emblem representing hacker subculture , although rotated by 90 degrees. It remains however unclear whether the occurrence in the comic is intentional or owed to the prime number pattern.
The 2008 XKCD Christmas Special Due to the slowing economy, we could only afford to produce the prime-numbered panels. You should be able to infer the missing parts of the story easily enough. We apologize for the inconvenience. [The first panel is blank.] [Megan carrying Christmas lights and Cueball watching.] Megan: I'm going to one-up those Christmas light displays on YouTube. [Megan thinking.] Megan: Hmm. Needs more flair. Do you know what happens when you fire sodium pellets into a snowbank? Cueball: No. Megan: Me neither. [The next panel is blank.] [Megan sitting in front of a console.] Megan: Whoops, one of the Arduino control boards sublimated. Megan: If only I could make it self-repairing... [The next panel is blank.] Megan: Shit. The system has become sentient. Cueball: Friggin' Python. System: GRAAARR! [The next three panels are blank.] [Megan showing laptop to Cueball.] Megan: But according to this email forward, Santa is secretly a Muslim! Cueball: It explains everything! [The next panel is blank.] Megan: Okay, the cloned raptors are hunting the last of the cyborgs. We're safe. Cueball: Are you sure you thought this through? [The next three panels are blank.] [Two couples appear in this next panel.] Cueball: Are the raptors contained? Ponytail: Sure. Unless they figure out how to build lightsabers. [The next panel is blank.] [Guy with hat fighting with a raptor using lightsabers.] Cueball: It's all right. I've got her. [Lightsaber appears from behind.] Snap-hiss! Cueball: ...Clever girl. [The next three panels are blank.] [Bill Gates is holding a weapon over Santa's body. The two girls are watching.] Megan: Great. Bill Gates kills Santa. Bill Gates: I thought it was Stallman with a dyed beard. [The next five panels are blank.] [Danish and Black Hat are looking at a tree.] Danish: Where did you get this Christmas tree? Black Hat: Nowhere. Danish: Did you cut down the Yggdrasil? Black Hat: ...Maybe. [The next panel is blank.] [Megan and Cueball holding hands and looking at reader.] Merry Christmas from XKCD <3 [The last panel is blank.]
