As an atheist, I’m not a huge adherent to Christmas celebrations¹, but I still partake, however minimally, of the holiday through family gatherings and gifting giving. I do this somewhat begrudgingly for a few reasons, some of them even tangentially related to my atheism, so I will usually argue with my family about it and that inevitably leads to accusations and aspersions cast on me. Which is one of the reasons I relent and celebrate during the holidays.

But a bigger reason is that you don’t need to be Christian to celebrate gift-giving and kindhearted joy. Which is why I smiled with delight when I noticed what had happened when VLC updated recently.

Apparently, though, there are some people out there who are bigger assholes when it comes to Christmas than me.

I am seeing a santa hat icon now on my media viewer. Not being Christian and not celebrating Christian holidays I’m wondering how I can remove that?

If VLC had put a crucifix or an angel or something decidedly Christian, I could see the issue here — I still wouldn’t care, but I wouldn’t mock this guy for it — but we’re talking about a Santa hat. Santa is not a part of the traditional Christmas, he’s about as secular as you can get and to take issue with his appearance in VLC is absurd.

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Footnotes

1. That is not a statement about atheists, it’s a statement about me; most of the atheists I know are more into Christmas than some Christians I know. [↩]