> it's not something an engineer should ever do.

But what if it wasn't Santa but it was like a different religious icon - like a menorah? I feel like literally thousands of American christians would have banned using VSCode or even Microsoft products for something like that.

A) It ignores entirely the modern day usage of the Santa hat (it is not really a religious symbol, it is more like a general holiday symbol)

B) Even if it were, say, a menorah, it could mean that the developers are Jewish. Why would someone of a different religion celebrating the holidays offend you? That would imply to me that you're intolerant of other religions.

C) It was obviously not placed there with bad intentions. It is clearly intended to be festive and fun.

D) It is a waste of developer resources to remove something they just added in.

E) It devalues issues that people with genuine offenses might raise in the future, i.e. the boy who cried wolf.

That reminds me of another "cultural artifact in software" with an interesting backstory --- T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM.