A Wide World of Winter Holiday Emojis

‘Tis the season when we unwrap those quintessential holiday emojis that have been patiently awaiting their annual re-emergence. Whatever you may be celebrating as this year draws to a close, there’s a whole host of emojis ready to help you express the festive spirit within.  

David Doochin

• 6 min read
A Wide World of Winter Holiday Emojis

‘Tis the season when we unwrap those quintessential holiday emojis that have been patiently awaiting their annual re-emergence. Whatever you may be celebrating as this year draws to a close, there’s a whole host of emojis ready to help you express the festive spirit within.  

In the Northern Hemisphere, many of these end-of-year holidays fall in winter, meaning they often evoke a cozy aesthetic and vibe, so you’ll often see a lot of winter emojis paired with holiday emojis in much of the world. 

🎄Christmas Emojis

There’s a sleighful of Christmas emojis to spread merriment during the holiday festivities.

Of course, the classics include the light-strung and star-topped 🎄Christmas tree, the 🦌Deer (which sees common usage as a reindeer around this time and even sported a red nose in earlier versions of Google’s emoji set), and the 🎅Santa Claus emoji, technically called “Father Christmas” by Unicode, which tends to use British English expressions for the naming of most characters.

Don’t forget Santa’s favorite finds during his gift delivery—the 🥛Glass of Milk and the 🍪Cookie.

Did you know the Santa emoji’s jolly, jovial expression wasn’t always the standard on some platforms? You can read more or watch more about the origin story of the Father Christmas emoji facelift. 

@emojipediaofficial

The pre-glow-up Santa emoji was giving naughty list… In this house we only stan smiling Santas 😤🎅🏡

♬ original sound - Emojipedia

A beloved partner to the Santa emoji is 🤶Mrs. Claus, officially named “Mother Christmas” by Unicode. However, just like with the localized name “Santa Claus,” this emoji is often colloquially referred to as “Mrs. Claus,” a name that has seen much more usage historically in literature, media, and pop culture.

The 🧑‍🎄Mx Claus emoji is also a great alternative for capturing the gender-neutral personified embodiment of Christmas gaiety, usually represented as an elderly, cheery figure with glasses.

🧑‍🎄Mx Claus is the only emoji that uses the honorific "Mx" - a term used as a title for those who do not identify as being of a particular gender, or for people who simply don't want to be identified by gender.  You can learn more here.

When it comes to conveying the generous gift-giving spirit of Christmas, there’s no better choice than the 🎁Wrapped Gift, which sees a wide range of color expressions across major vendors.

(If you’ve been naughty this year, you might be glad that the counterpart to the Christmas present, coal, doesn’t have an emoji yet - unless you create your own via Apple's Genmoji feature or our own Emojipedia AI Emoji Generator tool)

Other favorites of Christmas emoji enthusiasts around the world include the jingle-jangling 🔔Bell, its cousin the 🎶 Musical Notes to represent caroling, the ✝️Latin Cross as an emblem of Christianity, and the 👼Baby Angel to represent heavenly figures, like those central to the Nativity—or even the Baby Jesus himself, whose birth is the foundation for the holiday’s celebration, after all. 

🕎 Hanukkah Emojis

The eight-night Jewish Festival of Lights, which usually starts in November or December according to the Jewish calendar, celebrates themes of hope and perseverance, and there are plenty of emojis that capture the well-known and well-loved elements and essence of the holiday.

The 🕎Menorah is a go-to emblem of Hanukkah, its candles symbolizing the miraculous burning of oil in the rededicated ancient Temple for eight days against all expectations—with a ninth candle to light the rest. For this reason, the 🕯️Candle is a popular emoji partner for the Menorah, and you might see the 🛢️Oil Drum in the typical Hanukkah emoji lineup. 

The 🕍Synagogue, 🇮🇱Flag: Israel and the ✡️Star of David are nearly universally recognized symbols of Judaism, seeing widespread usage around Hanukkah and other Jewish holidays. (Though the 🔯Dotted Six-Pointed Star resembles the Star of David, it carries more of a mystical and spiritual connotation than an association with Judaism.)

As an homage to the oil that burned for the original eight days of Hanukkah, oil features heavily in the typical Hanukkah cuisine, for which some emojis have come to serve as stand-ins—like the 🍩Doughnut for sufganiyot, traditional deep-fried jam- or custard-filled donuts, and the 🥞Pancakes, which represent the classic oil-fried hashed-potato latkes, often referred to as potato pancakes. 

And though Hanukkah has no official color scheme, blue and white have for many become the holiday’s main palette, giving rise to upped usage in the 💙Blue Heart and the 🤍White Heart around this time of year.

🌽 Kwanzaa Emojis

Kwanzaa, a holiday primarily celebrated from December 26 to January 1 in the United States, honors American-African heritage and culture.

Though there are no officially designated Kwanzaa emojis in the Unicode Standard, as in countless other contexts, that hasn’t stopped emoji users, who have found creative ways to represent the holiday and express some of its key themes and motifs.

Like with the Hanukkah Menorah, much of the ceremony of Kwanzaa centers around candles, with the seven candles in the kinara, or candle holder, representing the seven principles of Kwanzaa. (Be careful that you don’t make the same mistake as the website formerly known as Twitter, which in 2019 accidentally launched a kinara emoji with only five candles.) It’s no surprise, then, that the 🕯️Candle is also a popular choice in the cornucopia of Kwanzaa emojis.

And speaking of cornucopias, part of the Kwanzaa tradition is about the bounty of the harvest and feasting to celebrate abundance: the 🌽Ear of Corn, which represents children and the future, the 🍲Pot of Food, and the mazoa, or the crop of fruits and vegetables like the 🍎Apple, the 🥭Mango, the 🍌Banana, and the 🍠Roasted Sweet Potato can serve as tried-and-true Kwanzaa emojis. So can the 🥁Drum, which for many is an important element of pan-African culture and of Kwanzaa as a whole.

Because Kwanzaa’s colors are the red, black, and green of the pan-African bendera, or flag, many users find that the combination of the ❤️Red Heart, 💚Green Heart, and 🖤Black Heart often substitute exceptionally well where no flag emoji yet exists.

🥂Other Holiday Emojis

Not every end-of-year celebration is necessarily religious or heritage-focused, but that doesn’t by any means signify that people don’t find ways to still keep the festive spirit alive. 

Those in the Northern Hemisphere who celebrate Yule, the winter festival of Germanic pagan origin that begins on the winter solstice and was originally separate from Christmas, might use the ❄️Snowflake, the 🪵Wood to represent the Yule Log, or the ☀️Sun to celebrate the return of longer days.

If you’re a diehard Seinfeld fan, you might be familiar with or even celebrate Festivus, the secular holiday created by character George Costanza as an alternative to the consumerism of Christmas. Some options include the 💪Flexed Bicep to represent the “feats of strength” and the 🗣️Speaking Head for the “airing of grievances,” both pivotal to the made-up holiday.

Users of X, formerly Twitter, have sometimes called for the platform to introduce a Festivus emoji, asking often specifically for the holiday’s trademark Festivus pole.

And finally, New Year’s Eve marks a milestone moment for many that offers a chance for reflection and contemplation at the year’s close.

There’s no shortage of emojis to represent classic New Year’s Resolutions—like getting in shape, for which the 🏋️Person Lifting Weights and the 🏃Person Running are typical choices, eating a healthier diet, which the 🥗Green Salad and the 🥑Avocado or 🥦Broccoli can illustrate, or saving money, exemplified by the 💸Money with Wings or the 💰Money Bag.

And it wouldn’t be New Year’s without 🎆Fireworks, the 🎉Party Popper, and 🥂Clinking Glasses.

However you ring in the end of the year, the emoji library is overflowing with choices to make the season feel even more worth celebrating.