Christmas is no longer a holiday that honors the Christian god, it’s a holiday that honors the god of capitalism, money.
I just use it to have a merry time with my family. Corporations try to co-opt everything; Christmas is no different. Is Pride about honoring greed and capitalism just because companies make everything rainbow? No, and neither is Christmas even though they try their best with that too. The only difference is buying gifts, but Christmas is about more than that, and homemade gifts are always an option.
Cool, so it’s still worth eschewing /s
I would like to note though that xmas is a very sore time of year for a lot of people (mostly queer, but others too) who do not have a good relationship with their family
That’s why I think it’s important that we bring Christmas back to its true religious roots: Fertility, hunting, and maybe a cult of the dead.
Well, that and I just kind of want to piss off all of my pearl clutching relatives.
But seriously, thank you for the reminder that this can be a particularly hard season.
I hope your solstice is marked by good times with real friends and chosen family.
Forget all the other traditions, the true meaning of the season is a battle of rhymes with a skeletal horse
It’s so beautiful! Thank you. I love that there’s a tradition where a man under a sheet carrying a horse skull prances around people’s living rooms, and academic scholars can all agree “we have no idea what is going on here”.
We’ve stopped with presents in my family, except for the kids. And they don’t get showered in them, a few things they really want, preferably cheap. Everyone else just wants nice food and family coziness.
And spawned an even longer shit fit.
Some people just want to be offended and we should simply let them.
not supporting the complainer but it is kinda scary how much control western culture has over tech…
there are so many holidays over the world. why christmas but not, say, Songkran or Chinese New Year?
Because the authors celebrate Christmas, but not Songkran or the Chinese New Year.
Love the fact that this spawned new issues complaining about the debugger icon promoting violence against insects.
What, the gear or the snowflake? I mean I know they are trolling but how do they make a connection to insects with that? That insects die in winter from cold temperatures?
I meant the debugger button, not the settings button. In the issue it showed up as an bug with a line going through it, as if saying “no insects allowed”.
#santagate2019
Santagate 2019 Pro for Workgroups
Jesus Christ what is wrong with people… Microsoft giving in to a clear troll, surprised they didn’t just lock and ignore that shit and move on.
Jesus Christ is not my Lord and saviour. I demand you delete this post immediately and apologise. This is as insulting to me as pineapple on a pizza
Pineapples are an affront to my deity since they are neither pine nor apples. Please delete your account immediately
Nice. Honestly, pretty well corralled, I would say.
Incidentally, I’m amused that one of the more popular responses includes the classic phrase
“Why can’t we all just get along”
Which I tend to notice after having had it explained well to me once by someone with more empathy than my own.
I won’t belabor it, but they pointed out to me that being tempted to say “Why can’t we all just get along” is usually a sign that we haven’t actually listened effectively.
So now when I hear or read “Why can’t we all just get along”, I see that [X] and hear the buzz from “Family Feud”, and hear one of the Family Feud host kindly say “No points. Let’s try again.”
Yeah, that’s basically saying “Can’t we just ignore the issue?”, which is easy if you’re the one who the issue isn’t affecting.
Wait, did I read that correctly and they replaced the hat with a snowflake?? Hahahaha
And yes, people often forget that generally offense is taken. When it’s intentionally given, it’s pretty clear.
I’m from Australia and snowflakes during December is hemispherist and offensive to us down under.
We can replace it with an emu.
No, that brings painful war flashbacks.
Yeah? Well I see your use of kangaroo shapes as elitist and many other -isms. Even the taste of marmite is discriminating! Etc. *spits in the general direction of Australia*
You mean farts i the general direction. FTFY.
Marmite is British, Vegemite is Australian.
(Apparently, there’s a New Zealand version of Marmite too. Every day is a school day)
I laughed at that too - they knew what they were doing, right?
they replaced the hat with a snowflake?
As someone from the global south i find the snowflake in winter offensive!
I think they get high on stuff they get cancelled by getting offended
What’s more infuriating is that they immediately gave in and removed it without any discussion
Ehhh better to be safe that have a discussion on religion and persecution in the issues board. Then it doesnt linger as an open ticket.
I feel like discussion about something like this is better suited for like a forum or a dedicated discussion channel. They discuss in a followup on the issue thread that they think even one offended person is too many, and they want to be as neutral as possible, which I think is commendable.
I think even if its a troll, its better to err on the side of “what if it is a real person, and they are offended.” Obviously, this needs to be taken within reason, like intolerance is not a valid reason etc etc.
It’s always baffling how people can define something as unacceptable. Says who? You? Who are you to just make that decision so unilaterally?
You can have your opinion, but it’s just that.
And their opinion is that this is unacceptable and outrageous.
I guess. The way it’s formulated purposefully removes them from the statement, though.
That’s how it always goes. It’s not that I’m offended. Is that it is offensive, objectively.
Yes, that’s what I’m challenging. Who do people think they are to think their subjective opinion is objective truth?
It usually goes hand in hand with not justifying themselves because “everyone agrees it’s unacceptable”.
This is nothing new, people expect religion not to be part of the “professional” environment. Dunno if VS code applies.
At the office (big corp) they don’t call it the “Christmas Party”, it’s “the holiday party”. They put lights and stuff up but no more Christmas trees/stars etc… not everyone celebrates christmas so that’s fine by me. If Microsoft wants to put a little santa hat on their product that’s fine by me too. If I was using some service based in Mexico and they put a little hat on a product for cinco de mayo i wouldn’t care. Christmas has other implications so it might be different, dunno
Personally, I’d rather we started celebrating everyone’s religious holidays instead of tiptoeing around Christmas. More parties and we get to learn about different cultures.
Hell yeah
Back in the mid-80s, when I got an email from HR about the Christmas Party at the local office, I sent a reply to the district HR manager complaining that not everyone in the company celebrated Christmas. Later that day, another email came out announcing the Holiday Party. So glad I had a hand in educating HR.
Company’s used email to that extent in the 80s? I get that tech jobs, unis, and research groups used it, but there was a company using it widely enough that HR used it?
Glad they didn’t cancel it after that lol
Christmas is religion yes, but Santa doesn’t really have anything to do with religion other than being on Christmas right?
Santa is based on Saint Nicholas of Myra, so he definitely has something to do with Christianity.
“Based on” and what people associate with now are vastly different. Most people don’t even know if Saint Nick is based on a real person.
The modern depiction of Santa is based on Coca-Cola.
They popularized it, but didn’t truly invent the classic depiction. Related fun fact, Santa used to commonly be green, and he looks pretty cool that way too!
Yea, Santa is the more secular icon. There are even Christians that take issue with the Santa character (which is a combination of “Pagan” and Christian mythos). I put Pagan in quotes, as that’s a Christian term for certain non-Christian beliefs.
Besides both being fairy tales, I would say it’s even anti religious, since religious Christmas clashes with it, yet he doesn’t bring gifts to baby Jesus. He brings commercial toys to all the other children.
Not to the poor children.
Now I’m curious, you know those gift spots where you can drop them off at like grocery stores and stuff to give to families in need? I wonder if the majority of those are labelled as from Santa, or from the parents? It’d be interesting to do a little survey.
I would think that in that kind of “unstructured” gift donation that parents/guardians would be able to come in and pick appropriate gifts for their kids, along with some wrapping paper, then wrap and tag them themselves.
Santa is a stand-in for Jesus… for children. They’re both magical beings that can perform miracles and have similar methods: Both Santa and Jesus have naughty lists and forms of punishment that come later; much later (both are equivalent lengths of time to a child though 🤣). Both bring “gifts”. Both have traditional appearances. Both have followers that wear silly hats and strange clothes. But most importantly…
Both are imaginary.
If you believe in Santa as an adult you’re ridiculed. If you believe in Jesus as an adult you’re just labeled, “Christian”. Yet the fact that nearly every child eventually finds out Santa isn’t real is quite disturbing to a lot of Christians. After all, if they could stop believing in Santa–who is so similar to Jesus in every way–then they could stop believing in Jesus.
After all, if they could stop believing in Santa–who is so similar to Jesus in every way–then they could stop believing in Jesus.
This is a laughably bad faith interpretation of the issue. Please, please leave this r/atheism exaggerated strawman rhetoric out of this website. I’m pretty sure most people on Lemmy are already atheist anyways.
You have to start off believing the little lies like the Hogfather before you can believe in the big lies like justice
You mean turtles don’t hold the world?
Zamn
You might not believe about what the Bible says about Jesus, but historically, there was at some point a person named Jesus. Whether or not he was like the Bible describes is another story. /lh
Historically, there were probably tens of thousands of people named, “Jesus” around that time. There were also loads and LOADS of people crucified by the Romans. If you were to make up a story and try to make it believable wouldn’t you pick a likely starting point?
I don’t think an actual Jew would equate a religious symbol with a swastika
But I do agree that religious imagery should never be in public
Or equate a santa hat to a religious symbol.
I don’t think Santa = swastika but it is super tiresome when Halloween ends and suddenly there’s Christmas shit everywhere. I know it’s more a factor of capitalism than Christianity, but it even infects the meager Hanukkah end caps we get. There’s frequently products being sold that are clearly just Christmas goods painted blue and white (argh) paraded around as Hanukkah goods. Fuckin blue and white pine tree tchotchkes? C’mon what the fuck is that? Hell, one year I saw “chocolate Maccabes” which were literally just chocolate Santa candies in a different foil.
It’s all expected, it happens every year (though the holiday seems to take up more of the calendar each year), but damn is it tiresome. And don’t get me started on the music!
Hahahahahahaha
Guess loosing his project didn’t deter him from using vscode.
I guess “ghost” is just placeholder for deleted accounts
In fact, in the issue they even refer to another username that doesn’t exist anymore
TIL
Same lol
That makes more sense…
The ‘ghost’ of Christmas past.
They should have replaced it with a yule goat mask:
https://www.blocket.se/annons/stockholm/julbocksmask_i_halm/1208094235
I just hope the very level headed decision by Microsoft to remove the imagery is going to be mistaken for their tacit approval of the link that dude shared.
It makes sense Microsoft did the thing and removed it, the linked article is … political af
omg this is the person who deleted all their files on accident lol
ghostis just GitHub’s way of saying deleted user.Quite spooky
don’t you mean quite offensive?
Why is Github forcing this unscientific religious propaganda on us? If Github doesn’t change this immediately, I will never ever delete my account! >:(
Lmao thanks for the info
Wow I didn’t expect so many religious people on Lemmy. Fuck christmas and every religious holiday. No special treatment for pale skins or anybody else. People are so indoctrinated into these rituals that they think it’s “normal”. Keep that bullshit out of my code please.
You don’t have to be religious to think a fat dude in some red clothes that magically travels around the world giving out presents to good children isn’t a fun yearly tradition. Frankly it’s kind of an overdramatic reaction to a small red hat overlaid onto an icon. Should configuration be provided to disable the functionally? Sure I don’t care, hell have it disabled by default I don’t mind but it’s stupid to make a huge stink about something so minor.
