Offensive virtual festive gourds

I upgraded my Mac text editor today and saw the following surprising entry in the release notes:

[REMOVED] TextMate no longer pays tribute to human sacrifices, rape, nor does it show a picture of the God of the deaths in your dock — ticket 945BEB5D

Normally I’d expect to see a list of bug fixes or new features. The above entry surprised me, and I had to find out why it was there. It all spawned from the company deciding to push out a Halloween-oriented theme for the software. The theme included this dock icon:

Inevitably, someone found it offensive, and their complaint caused it to be removed: “I found this offensive and promptly removed the theme. Please understand I do not think it is offensive because I am some fanatical weirdo. But the roots of Halloween are in animal and human sacrifices as well as rape in the name if Satan.”

Here’s the full story with more detail. I can only imagine what will happen if they push out any Christmas-oriented imagery in their December updates.