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Comment by TravHatesMe | Hacker News Reader

Wow I was not aware of this. The original github issue:

> The Santa Hat on vscode insiders and pushing of religion is very offensive to me, additionally xmas has cost millions of Jews their lives over the centuries, yet even if that was not the case, pushing religious symbols as part of a product update is completely unacceptable. Please remove it immediately and make it your top priority. To me this is almost equally offensive as a swastika. https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/87268

I didn't know that Santa Claus was a religious symbol, I celebrate with Santa and I do not affiliate with any religion. But the status quo is to accommodate every single person. People believe they are entitled to it: "Make it your top priority" -- OK boss! There needs to be a balance. Complete stubbornness is not good. Bending over to every single request, regardless of its merit, is not good either.

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Never mind combating the historical inaccuracy - somebody is offended! Take action now! Absolutely pathetic.

As I recall, the guy said it was a troll. The PC Police are enough to make people take shitposting seriously. Further examples include stuff like the "okay sign" being a hate symbol.

The user's first name was "Christian". He claimed to be Jewish. Most people ignored this bit of cognitive dissonance, and joined the mob. People only hear what they want to hear.

The guy's picture was also a random one from the internet. Quote from a reddit post:

> The guy isn't real. A quick reverse image search would have shown this guy is also known as "David Shiffer" based in Norway, apparently a CEO of ServiceLayer, yet no mention of him anywhere else on the internet - including LinkedIn (strange for a CEO) and another profile of his linking to a dating site.

> I didn't know that Santa Claus was a religious symbol

Really? That's a bit surprising to me. I mean, Santa Claus is specifically part of a celebration of a Christian holiday, how could it not be a religious symbol?

(This is kind of assuming we're talking about the American-style conception of Santa Claus, I believe other regions use really do use it in a non-religious way, so that could totally be the disconnect.)

Note: the original ticket is ridiculous, or at least the way it is framed. And it seems that it's a troll in the first place, which makes sense.

The tradition of Santa Claus comes from a whole host of pre-Christian Nordic, north-western European and Slavic traditions with different mythical figures which got distilled into St. Nicholas in the Netherlands and taken to the new world by Dutch settlers. There Sinterklaas - as he's called in Dutch - got bastardised into Santa Claus, mixed up with some more Nordic folklore including possibly Odin's 8-legged horse Sleipnir who got transformed into flying reindeer. While the Dutch version of St. Nicholas rides a horse which can walk over rooftops, Santa Claus rides a flying sleigh pulled by reindeer. That sleigh is also found with the Nordic 'Jultomte' (a 'tomte' can be a brownie or gnome but in this case he's usually portrayed as a human-sized long-bearded man-like figure, sometimes it is pulled by a goat ('Julbocken' or the Yule Goat) for another link towards Nordic mythology.

So, is Santa Claus a religious figure? In as much as traditions, myths and customs often have relations to religion he might be but that is taking the term 'religious figure' too far. The modern-day Santa Claus generally appears at Christmas but even that does not link him to a single religion since the Christmas holiday itself comes from the Germanic Yule - in Swedish Christmas is called 'Jul' and still retains several links to the older Yuletide.

In short, calling Santa Claus 'a religious figure' is incorrect, he is a mythological figure who was assimilated into different traditions over the span of centuries. The American version of Santa Claus - the jolly fat man in red - is more of a commercial figure than anything else.

Interesting!

But I'm not sure that that history is really relevant. Every religious figure or ritual that exists comes from somewhere - most "modern" religions have pagan ancestors. That fact alone doesn't make something a religious figure or not, or we'd basically have to say that almost no figure is a religious.

What matters is the symbol as seen and interacted with today. Just look at the first line of Wikipedia describing Santa Claus (aka Father Christmas in some places):

> Santa Claus, also known as Father Christmas, Saint Nicholas, Saint Nick, Kris Kringle, or simply Santa, is a legendary character originating in Western Christian culture who is said to bring gifts to the homes of well-behaved children on the night of Christmas Eve (24 December) or during the early morning hours of Christmas Day (25 December).

You can't really say that that isn't tied to Christianity, at least in the US and England.

I'm further very disturbed at how that issue, and a bunch of other issues posted to their repo in response to the Santa takedown are all fully locked for discussions and reactions. It's messy all around, and I don't envy anyone being in that decision making tree. They're pretty much screwed all around, and the best they can do is pick the not-so-middle ground that happens to offend the least amount of people.

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