Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

donation

2022-06-19 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
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donation
Votey panel for donation
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Explanation

This comic plays on the tradition of sending flowers to a funeral. In the first panel, an elderly person remarks that they have never understood funeral flowers, since they will be dead and unable to appreciate them. Their child suggests they could ask people to make donations instead. The elderly person enthusiastically agrees -- but their idea of a "donation" is revealed in the final panel: a sign at the funeral requests that mourners donate their bodies to a "Great Pyre" so the deceased can be "honored in the Beyond Worlds."

The joke subverts the common and benign practice of requesting charitable donations "in lieu of flowers." Instead of a donation to a hospital or charity, the deceased has interpreted "donation" in the most literal and morbid way possible, essentially asking funeral-goers to sacrifice themselves on a funeral pyre. The humor comes from the escalation: a reasonable complaint about funeral conventions spirals into an absurd, quasi-pagan demand.

View History (1) Original Comic