Santa Claus Emoji
Father Christmas in a red hat and white beard, the figure at the centre of the secular Christmas.
Try Santa Claus emoji
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Meaning & usage
What does the Santa Claus emoji mean?
Father Christmas in a red hat and white beard, the figure at the centre of the secular Christmas.
Festive and entirely secular. It belongs to the gift-and-stocking side of Christmas, where 🎄 covers the season more broadly.
How to use 🎅 naturally
December messages, gift talk and anything festive.
Activity emoji name what is happening rather than how anyone feels about it. They work as compact labels for plans, results and hobbies, which is why invitations and announcements lean on them so heavily.
From standard to slang
The history of 🎅
- 2010
First defined as emoji
According to Unicode’s Emoji Versions data, Santa Claus was first defined as emoji in Emoji 0.6, dated 2010. That label is retrospective: Unicode applied it later to the early mobile core it inherited from the Japanese carriers.
- Before the keyboard
Its visual roots
The red-suited, white-bearded figure settled on by American illustrators in the nineteenth century. He is one of the few emoji people whose design is fixed by costume rather than by expression.
- Today
How its use evolved
December messages, gift talk and anything festive.
Dates follow Unicode’s official Emoji Versions chart. Versions before Emoji 1.0 are labelled retrospectively. See the history of emoji.
In conversation
Examples of 🎅 in messages
These examples show the emoji in complete messages, where the words make its intended tone easier to read.
Secret Santa draw is Friday 🎅
Someone has to do the costume 🎅
Told her he is real for one more year 🎅
When to use it
Using 🎅 clearly
December messages, gift talk and anything festive. It lands as santa emoji or 🎅 meaning when the rest of the message supports that reading, and it is the surrounding words that do the deciding — so in a sensitive, professional or cross-cultural conversation, say the thing outright as well.
Common questions
About the santa claus emoji
What does 🎅 mean in a text message?
Father Christmas in a red hat and white beard, the figure at the centre of the secular Christmas. Festive and entirely secular. It belongs to the gift-and-stocking side of Christmas, where 🎄 covers the season more broadly.
Is 🎅 always positive?
Not always. Its usual readings are santa emoji, 🎅 meaning, father christmas emoji, and irony or the relationship between the people can flip any of them.
Why does 🎅 look different on another device?
U+1F385 identifies the emoji; the picture is a font, drawn separately by Apple, Google, Microsoft and Samsung. Only the artwork changes, never the character.
How do I copy and paste the santa claus emoji?
Use the copy button at the top of this page. 🎅 is a character, not an image, so it pastes into messages, captions and filenames as ordinary text.
When was the santa claus emoji introduced?
Unicode’s Emoji Versions data first records 🎅 as emoji in Emoji 0.6, dated 2010. Early emoji version numbers can be retrospective, so this date describes its place in the standardised emoji set rather than the first-ever appearance of the underlying symbol.
For developers
🎅 in code
Every value below is generated from the character itself, so it stays correct even where a file encoding cannot hold the emoji directly.
| Format | Value | When to use it | Copy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unicode | U+1F385 | The standard reference. Use it to search a character map or a spec. | |
| HTML (hex) | 🎅 | For HTML and XML. Safe in files that are not saved as UTF-8. | |
| HTML (decimal) | 🎅 | The same reference in decimal. Both render identically. | |
| CSS | \1F385 | For the content property. Keep the quotes around the whole value. | |
| JavaScript | \u{1F385} | A string-literal escape. Needs the u flag inside a regular expression. | |
| URL-encoded | %F0%9F%8E%85 | Percent-encoded UTF-8, for query strings and API requests. |
Reference card
Emoji details
- Unicode
- U+1F385
- Category
- Activities & Play
- Also known as
- santa emoji🎅 meaningfather christmas emoji
Put it in a message
When 🎅 is the right choice
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