christmastronomy
Explanation
The Joke
The comic is a conversation between two characters about the "Christmas creep" phenomenon -- the tendency for Christmas-related commercial activity to start earlier and earlier each year. One character asks if the other has noticed that stores always seem to display Christmas stuff earlier every year. The other character responds with a series of increasingly scientific and absurd explanations.
First, they note that holiday commerce is a sort of soulless husk that keeps pushing its expressionless face further from God and ever closer to mammon (greed). Then they pivot to an astronomical explanation: the orbital period of the Earth is one hour shorter than 365.25 days, so our calendar Christmas slowly drifts relative to the actual solar year. They note that Christmas stuff has been appearing about a quarter of a day sooner every year, but explain that this is not actually the stores -- it is just our calendar drifting. They predict that eventually, official Christmas and retail Christmas will diverge so much that Christmas stuff will appear in stores from March through November, and retail Christmas will become a separate calendar holiday from the religious one. The final punchline: they declare that intellectualism is dead in this country.
The Humor
The humor works on multiple levels. The comic starts with a common complaint (Christmas displays appearing too early) and then takes it in an unexpected direction with a pseudo-scientific explanation involving orbital mechanics and calendar drift. The explanation sounds plausible on the surface -- the Gregorian calendar does involve leap year corrections -- but the application to retail Christmas is completely absurd. The real reason stores put up Christmas displays early is simply commercial greed, not orbital mechanics.
The final panel, where someone declares "intellectualism is dead in this country," serves as an ironic punchline. The character has just delivered an elaborate, nerdy, and completely misapplied scientific explanation for a simple economic phenomenon, and the response treats them as though they are the one being anti-intellectual. It satirizes how both pseudo-intellectual overanalysis and anti-intellectual dismissal can miss the obvious truth.
References
The title "Christmastronomy" is a portmanteau of "Christmas" and "astronomy." The discussion of the Earth is orbital period touches on real calendar science -- the tropical year is approximately 365.2422 days, and the Gregorian calendar accommodates this with leap years. The reference to "mammon" is from the Bible (Matthew 6:24), where mammon represents the personification of wealth and greed, opposed to God. The "Christmas creep" phenomenon is a well-documented commercial trend that has been observed and complained about for decades.