2010-12-13
Explanation
This comic shows Santa Claus at his desk with his filing system visible behind him. Rather than the traditional binary "Nice" and "Naughty" lists, Santa has added a third category: "Not Bad, But Kind of a Dick." The caption below reads, "Ask yourself: Did you get everything you wanted for Christmas?"
The joke plays on the common understanding that Santa's list has only two categories -- naughty and nice -- suggesting the reason many people get some gifts but not everything they wanted is that they fall into this gray area. They are not bad enough for the naughty list (coal) but not quite nice enough for the full nice-list treatment. It is a humorous acknowledgment that most people's behavior falls somewhere in a morally ambiguous middle ground rather than at the extremes of good or bad.