[schlipity]

I believe this was blown way out of proportion, but I am uncertain how else the visual studio code team should've responded.

Where do you draw the line?

Was there a way to politely respond to this person without kowtowing to them?

Maybe by adding an option to disable the santa hat, where it's on by default, but you can turn it off?

Google has been sprucing up their search page for years now; Many a santa hat has been present, and people were both annoyed and happy, and also apathetic. Would Google have responded similarly, if some random person had a pipeline right to their developers?

It feels like even though some random person with a complaint got his wish, everyone else lost something. Like the ability to put something fun in your software without being overly concerned about offending one person.

[petepete]

Totally agree. I wonder if he's also complained to the Unicode Consortium about the inclusion of Santa and Mrs Santa emoji.

[faissaloo]

This may be the only way to get rid of emoji, I say have at it.

[romellem]

A quick search of Google Doodles that included santa:

* https://www.google.com/doodles/happy-holidays-2011

* https://www.google.com/doodles/holidays-2018-northern-hemisp...

* https://www.google.com/doodles/holidays-2018-northern-hemisp...

* https://www.google.com/doodles/holidays-2018-northern-hemisp...

* https://www.google.com/doodles/holidays-2018-southern-hemisp...

[sdinsn]

> I am uncertain how else the visual studio code team should've responded

They should have responded "No" to the crazy person who equated a santa claus hat to a swastika.

[faissaloo]

>Maybe by adding an option to disable the santa hat, where it's on by default, but you can turn it off?

This honestly would have been the best solution, I'm Muslim and I'd like to switch it off but I'm not going to go out of my way to complain about someone else's program that I have voluntarily placed on my computer when it's clearly a valuable part of people's traditions and I can patch it myself.