Christmas is no longer a holiday that honors the Christian god, it’s a holiday that honors the god of capitalism, money.
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
And spawned an even longer shit fit.
Some people just want to be offended and we should simply let them.
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)
they replaced the hat with a snowflake?
As someone from the global south i find the snowflake in winter offensive!
I laughed at that too - they knew what they were doing, right?
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
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.”
Love the fact that this spawned new issues complaining about the debugger icon promoting violence against insects.
#santagate2019
Santagate 2019 Pro for Workgroups
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.
I think they get high on stuff they get cancelled by getting offended
What religious symbol? Saint Nicholas had nothing to do with the fat guy dressed in red that coca cola made up. The hat is fine goddammit
Isn’t capitalism a religion?
Haha you’re not wrong
touché
Well, they took inspiration from Clement Clarke Moore’s (1922) “Twas the night before Christmas” and illustrations from Thomas Nast (1881) showing him in red with the sack over his shoulder. Certainly, Coca Cola has solidified the modern image with their ad campaign though starting in 1931. Src
TIL coca cola didn’t create it, ty
He was a bishop, holy after.
I think you don’t get it, modern Santa is so far away from his origins, at the point is not a christian figure anymore. I mean, christmas elves? A flying pack of reindeer? To me, is just a very happy and oversized leprechaun. Not very christian if you mind me lol. Not bad per se, but it’s good to keep in mind christian symbols are different than this red hat.
Christmas is religion yes, but Santa doesn’t really have anything to do with religion other than being on Christmas right?
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.
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.
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?
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
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.
Santa is based on Saint Nicholas of Myra, so he definitely has something to do with Christianity.
The modern depiction of Santa is based on Coca-Cola.
“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.
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.
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
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?
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.
omg this is the person who deleted all their files on accident lol
edit: nevermind
ghostis just GitHub’s way of saying deleted user.Lmao thanks for the info
Quite spooky
Why is Github forcing this unscientific religious propaganda on us? If Github doesn’t change this immediately, I will never ever delete my account! >:(
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…
Wait till they see the vlc logo during christmas …
What is it like?
If I remember correctly it switches to this logo during christmas
Sing along kids! Mr. Ghosty the Christmas troll…
What’s more infuriating is that they immediately gave in and removed it without any discussion
The ‘ghost’ of Christmas past.
Hahahahahahaha
They should have replaced it with a yule goat mask:
https://www.blocket.se/annons/stockholm/julbocksmask_i_halm/1208094235
The article they share in the issue to explain why Christmas is so offensive is absolutely wild. To quote:
Imagine that between 1933-45, the Nazi regime celebrated Adolf Hitler’s birthday – April 20 – as a holiday. Imagine that they named the day, “Hitlerday,” and observed the day with feasting, drunkenness, gift-giving, and various pagan practices.
That analogy seems a better fit for a lot of Jewish holidays then Christmas. Passover is about the mass death of innocent Egyptian children. Chanukah is about a revolt against Greek rule where:
Christmas is just about some baby being born ( on probably a different day)
The “real meaning” of Christmas was getting the pagans on board with Christianity, don’t let anyone lie to you otherwise lol.
I read pagers for a sec and was confused… then again, god is the biggest mass murderer of all time.
Yep the birth of Christ just coincidentally coincides with the end of Brumalia, which of course noone noticed when the emperor suddenly insisted everyone become Christian and had the bible written by committee. And it’s of course a coincidence that that was (back in the day) exactly the winter solstice. And it’s also just a coincidence that Jesus’ life story has quite some parallels to that of earlier sun gods from the general area.
Most current Christmas traditions are more Germanic in nature, though, e.g. the Christmas tree. While in the current form a quite recent invention, decorating the house with evergreen stuff was common through the ages – branches, wreaths, not whole-ass trees. The needles btw are fine smudging material don’t just sweep them away.
Which earlier sun gods does Jesus’s life story have parallels with?
Sol Invictus, in particular it’s also where the halo in depictions comes from… which isn’t really “other sun gods”, it’s in particular the Roman sun god. Misremembered the resurrection part, that’s Osiris who isn’t a sun god and the Horus parallels have been shown to be bunk, aside from getting nursed by Mary depictions being inspired by Horus getting nursed by Isis.
I read something about them (mainly in Wikipedia), and I see some parallels in artistic style or symbolism, but I don’t see a substantial parallel in their stories, although I didn’t find much about the story of Sol Invictus. I don’t see that someone was nursed as a significant parallel because almost every human was nursed.
I focused on parallels in their stories because I don’t see parallels in the style of art depicting them as problematic to Christianity. But most of your previous comment was about artistic depictions, so, if you think that they are problematic, please, explain that more in details.
I’m not even Christian what would I care about depictions or inspiration being “problematically Pagan”.
What I can say is that it’s unlikely that much of the parallels (like the Osiris thing) existed before Rome became Christian as over in staunchly monotheist Palestine people wouldn’t have taken inspiration like that, while turning multiple gods into one sounds quite reasonable for a people going from polytheism to monotheism.
For modern Christian, I think, the question is “How much did the Romans change”. That is, how different was early, pre-Roman, Christianity to what’s now considered authoritative, like the Bible, which wasn’t brought down from a mountain by Jesus.
I hope they never walk past a church…
