Need a lot of these come Chinese New Year.
People usually call this Twitter’s Chinese New Year or Lunar New Year emoji. Since 2016, this has included Lunar New Year. Sometimes for special events like holidays or awards ceremonies, Twitter will release special event-specific emoji that get added to tweets that include certain hashtags. The first usually happens during the actual Lunar New Year season. There are a few cases where you’ll hear the phrase Chinese New Year emoji being thrown around. The need and desire for Chinese holiday emoji was definitely there for a long time. Those who chose not to use sticker packs tended to make do with existing emoji, like the Dragon ?, Flag of China ??, or Fireworks? emoji. These things don’t happen in a vacuum: prior to the Unicode release announcement, several third-party apps made up for the lack of actual Chinese New Year emoji (and Lunar New Year celebrations in other East Asian cultures) by making Chinese-holiday-themed stickers and icons available. We need Chinese / Lunar New Year emoji!! The announcement of the new emoji in August 2017 was so hotly anticipated that it led to a huge spike in search interest for the phrase Chinese New Year emoji during the next Lunar New Year in February 2018.
The Firecracker ?, Red Envelope ?, and Moon Cake ? emoji are the first to explicitly reference Chinese holidays-and for literally billions of people worldwide who celebrate them, they’re a really big deal. And, since the Unicode Consortium is based in the Bay Area of California, home to many major emoji vendors like Apple and Google, many other holiday-based emoji tend to be Western and Judeo-Christian, such as the Christmas Tree ?. Some examples include the Moon Viewing Ceremony ?, the Tanabata Tree ?, and the Japanese Dolls ? emoji, among others. Since emoji are originally from Japan, many celebrate Japanese traditions and holidays. The three Chinese-holiday-specific emoji- Firecracker ?, Red Envelope ?, and Moon Cake ? emoji-were approved under Unicode 11.0 and added to Emoji 11.0 in June 2018.