Last Updated Dec 20th, 2019 at 11:42 am

Microsoft came under fire this week for adding a Santa hat to the Settings icon in Visual Studio Code, a code editor developed by Microsoft.

A user complained about the addition of the hat on GitHub, a software development platform, saying that the hat was "very offensive."

"The Santa Hat on vscode insiders and pushing of religion is very offensive to me, additionally xmas has cost millions of Jews their lives over the centuries, yet even if that was not the case, pushing religious symbols as part of a product update is completely unacceptable," the user wrote. "Please remove it immediately and make it your top priority. To me this is almost equally offensive as a swastika."

Microsoft apologized for hurting the user's feelings and removed the hat. The company then received criticism from those who supported the hat, leading to the Microsoft/vscode issues tracker having to be shut down.