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Get Through the Year with These Visual Studio Code Holiday Themes

Just what you need to crawl over the finish line and say goodbye to 2020 with a smile on your face. 🤶

Face it, you're just barely holding on right now. How much bad stuff can happen in one year? As you grit your teeth and try to pound out some more code while waiting for 2021 --- a new president, a vaccine, a return to the office(?), a "new normal" -- you need a little push to get your through.

And here it is! A collection of great holiday themes for Visual Studio Code to spruce up your coding environment. Just what you need to crawl over the finish line, slump to the pavement and say goodbye to 2020 with a smile on your face. 🎅

  • Festive Editor

    Festive Editor
    [Click on image for larger view.] Festive Editor
    AUTHOR: Matt Lacey
    INSTALLS: 21
    RELEASED: 11/18/20
    UPDATED: 11/20/20
    DESCRIPTION: Add festive additions to the editor.

    This is an example extension created as part of an article showing how to get started with Visual Studio extensibility development.

    Get it here

  • North Pole

    North Pole
    [Click on image for larger view.] North Pole
    AUTHOR: m-fin
    INSTALLS: 1,080
    RATING: 5 from 2 developers
    RELEASED: 10/18/2019
    UPDATED: 10/19/2019
    DESCRIPTION: A dark VS Code theme to get you in the holiday spirit.

    Feel free to make suggestions or submit a pull request, this is a work in progress and I plan on making more refinements.

    Get it here.

  • Christmas Theme

    North Pole
    [Click on image for larger, animated GIF view.] Christmas Theme in Animated Action
    AUTHOR: SATYAM ROY
    INSTALLS: 685
    RATING: 5 from 1 developer
    RELEASED: 11/30/2020
    UPDATED: 11/30/2020
    DESCRIPTION: Nothing ever seems too bad, too hard, or too sad when you've got a Christmas decorations in your Vs-Code Environment.

    Some Christmas tree ornaments do more than glitter and glow, they represent a gift of love given a long time ago.😍

    Get it here

  • Merry Christmas

    The Merry Christmas Theme File with the Merry Christmas Theme Applied
    [Click on image for larger, animated GIF view.] The Merry Christmas Theme File with the Merry Christmas Theme Applied
    AUTHOR: DankThemes
    INSTALLS: 1,684
    RELEASED: 10/16/2018
    UPDATED: 10/16/2018
    DESCRIPTION: The only Santa approved theme.

    Get it here

  • Santa Baby

    The Santa Baby Theme File with the Santa Baby Theme Applied
    [Click on image for larger, animated GIF view.] The Santa Baby Theme File with the Santa Baby Theme Applied
    AUTHOR: Benjamin Hargett
    INSTALLS: 1,014
    RELEASED: 11/13/2018
    UPDATED: 11/13/2018
    DESCRIPTION: Uses Atom One Dark syntax highlighting with a dazzle of christmas charm.

    Enjoy!

    Get it here

  • Code Xmas

    The Merry Christmas Theme File with the Merry Christmas Theme Applied
    [Click on image for larger, animated GIF view.] The Code Xmas Theme File with the Code Xmas Theme Applied
    AUTHOR: BK-Code-Xmas
    INSTALLS: 893
    RATING: 5 from 1 developer
    RELEASED: 11/11/2019
    UPDATED: 11/11/2019
    DESCRIPTION: A Yuletide theme for those of us whose favorite editor needs a little Christmas cheer.

    Enjoy!

    Get it here.

So there you have it -- the best holiday extensions for VS Code (that I could find in a short amount of time trying to publish some kind of end-of-year article before my vacation kicks in).

On the Visual Studio IDE side of things, I found the holiday prebuilt holiday theme offerings to be quite skimpy. So you're basically limited to just manually tweaking color/text and other settings to create your own holiday theme. Tools like the Visual Studio Color Theme Designer can be used for that.

However, Matt Lacey's Festive Editor mentioned above is offered as a VS IDE extension.

Also, Microsoft's Mads Kristensen, probably the most accomplished extension writer on the planet, recently published a video on Writing Visual Studio Extensions with Mads - Holiday Special. It looks like Kristensen developed the Sticky Christmas extension as part of that presentation, which he describes as "A simulation of what happens when you spill cookies and eggnog into your keyboard while coding." He announced it ready for download on Dec. 4, but it also says "coming soon" and I couldn't make it work, so who knows?

I may have to conduct a manual, real-life experiment of my own to find out what happens in that situation, heavy on the eggnog, as I slump over the 2020 finish line. Just a couple more weeks ....

Have you found any of your own cool holiday themes? Please share in the comments section below. (Note: Intro image for article comes from m-fin's North Pole extension page.)

About the Author

David Ramel is an editor and writer at Converge 360.

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