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Comment by im3w1l | Hacker News Reader

In my experience people love quirky details performed for long lost reasons. They are central to our culture and identity creation. Take Santa Claus on Christmas dressing in red and saying hohoho, and entering through the chimney. Why not a blue woman squeezing through a tiny crack in the wall and saying neeneeneeneenee?

EDIT: Didn't downvote you btw

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Ah, yes, quirky Santa Claus who dresses in red and white for some long lost reason...

"The Santa Claus we all know and love — that big, jolly man in the red suit with a white beard — didn’t always look that way. In fact, many people are surprised to learn that prior to 1931, Santa was depicted as everything from a tall gaunt man to a spooky-looking elf. He has donned a bishop's robe and a Norse huntsman's animal skin."[1]

"Close your eyes and think of Father Christmas. What do you see? A jolly, fat man, with rosy red cheeks, a fluffy white beard and a red suit? Well close your eyes again and try and imagine him with a green suit rather than red...

Difficult maybe, but that is how the British Father Christmas should be dressed. In the 1930s a certain American soft drinks company decided Santa should be dressed in red as part of a marketing campaign and that has stuck."[2]

[1]http://www.coca-colacompany.com/holidays/the-true-history-of...

[2]http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/york/hi/people_and_places/histor...

Sorry but Coke didn't make Santa read and round, the character had been depicted like that before. While they did popularise this, and has gone on to inspire the popular image of Santa, so say they created it is going a bit far.

http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/santa/cocacola.asp http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7152054.stm

I guess its all context. When you do it yourself, it can be fun. When you do it as an homage, that can be nice too. When you do it because someone else wants you to do it for some reason they themselves don't know or care about, it's not fun. I suppose that is the origin of cultural memes but in the context of a big company workplace, my mind tends to go the other way. I'm not a perfectionist so I guess I don't relate to this from the start.

PS: This is perhaps the most disliked comment I've ever made on HN. I'm genuinely confused. Did this seem like trolling?

it's cute, but pointless. probably contributes close to nothing in terms of revenue.

And that's exactly why Apple is the world's most valuable brand. Attention to detail, even if it doesn't directly generate revenue can have profound effects that will never be discovered in an A/B test or by crunching financials. Unfortunately most tech companies (and businesses in general) don't understand this.

yes, but it's nothing to be written about or discussed. lots of startups do this and they get no attention

But probably costs next to nothing in terms of time. Look at all the companies we're discussing just in this thread. Why does everything have to be only in terms of revenue?

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