Mistletoe Theme
A cozy Christmas color theme for VS Code. Evergreen nights, holly-berry keywords, gold-star functions, brackets that light up like fairy lights, and a live countdown to Christmas with falling snow.
Mistletoe Midnight
Mistletoe Frost
- Countdown to Christmas in the status bar (
🎄 52 days to Christmas), switching to hours and minutes on the final day.
- Rotating festive messages that type themselves out in the status bar. Click one to skip to the next.
- Christmas Countdown view (the mistletoe icon in the activity bar): a live clock, falling snow, a scrolling message banner, and 24 advent lights that switch on one per day through December.
- Christmas Eve mode for countries that celebrate on the 24th.
- Everything respects VS Code's Reduce Motion setting and can be switched off (see Settings).
Theme features
- Two variants: Midnight (dark, deep evergreen) and Frost (light, warm fresh-snow paper).
- Christmas-light brackets: nested bracket pairs cycle through gold, red, green, ice blue, candy pink and sugar plum.
- Readable first: every syntax color meets WCAG AA contrast (4.5:1) against its background.
- Full coverage: semantic highlighting, terminal ANSI colors, git decorations, diff/merge, markdown and CSS.
Install
- Open the Extensions view (
Ctrl+Shift+X / Cmd+Shift+X).
- Search for Mistletoe Theme and click Install.
- Run Preferences: Color Theme (
Ctrl+K Ctrl+T / Cmd+K Cmd+T) and pick Mistletoe Midnight or Mistletoe Frost.
Bracket pair colors use VS Code's built-in editor.bracketPairColorization.enabled, which is on by default.
Settings
| Setting |
Default |
What it does |
mistletoe.countdown.enabled |
true |
Countdown in the status bar |
mistletoe.countdown.target |
christmasDay |
christmasDay (25 Dec) or christmasEve (24 Dec) |
mistletoe.ticker.enabled |
true |
Rotating messages in the status bar |
mistletoe.ticker.style |
typewriter |
typewriter or static |
mistletoe.ticker.intervalSeconds |
15 |
Seconds between messages |
mistletoe.messages |
[] |
Your own messages; {days} and {target} are filled in |
mistletoe.snow.enabled |
true |
Snow in the countdown view |
Commands (in the Command Palette): Mistletoe: Show Christmas Countdown, Mistletoe: Next Festive Message, Mistletoe: Toggle Status Bar Countdown and Messages.
The theme and the extras are independent: you can use the extras with any color theme, or turn them off and keep just the colors.
Palette
| Ornament |
Used for |
Midnight |
Frost |
| Holly berry |
keywords, tags |
#f2606f |
#b5172f |
| Mistletoe leaf |
strings |
#a3d98c |
#2e7d3a |
| Tree-top star |
functions, attributes |
#f4c86a |
#946200 |
| Icicle |
types, classes |
#8fd3ea |
#16708f |
| Candy cane |
numbers, constants |
#ffa3b5 |
#a8327f |
| Sugar plum |
properties |
#cdb4f5 |
#7a3fb0 |
| Eggnog / gingerbread |
parameters |
#f1dcbc |
#8b5a2b |
| Fireside |
this, decorators, regex |
#ff9a6b |
#c2410c |
| Peppermint |
operators |
#7fdcc4 |
#0f7f6a |
| Fresh snow / evergreen ink |
text |
#e6eee8 |
#1e2d28 |
Development
npm install
npm run build # regenerate themes/*.json from scripts/palettes.mjs (fails on low contrast)
npm test # countdown logic + extension smoke test
npm run preview # re-render the screenshots (needs Google Chrome)
npm run package # build a .vsix
Press F5 in VS Code with this folder open to try the theme in an Extension Development Host.
License
MIT
