Merry Christmas in Chinese: 圣诞快乐 and more

Merry Christmas in Chinese is 圣诞快乐 Shèngdàn kuàilè, said roughly "shung-dahn kwai-luh". That is Merry Christmas in Mandarin, the standard language of mainland China and Taiwan; Hong Kong writes the same four characters and reads them in Cantonese. 圣诞 Shèngdàn means "Christmas", literally "holy birth", and 快乐 kuàilè means "happy". To make it a wish to someone, put 祝你 zhù nǐ, "I wish you", in front: 祝你圣诞快乐！ Below are Christmas wishes in Chinese ready to copy into a card or a message, for family, friends and work; then the greeting word by word with its four tones, the words of the season from 平安夜 to 圣诞老人, how Taiwan and Hong Kong say and keep Christmas, and how often Chinese film and television subtitles say these words.

Updated 28 October 2026 · 12 min read

Christmas wishes in Chinese, ready to copy

Chinese has a polite "you", 您 nín, beside the everyday 你 nǐ. Use 你 for family and friends, 您 for a client, a teacher or someone senior, and 你们 nǐmen for several people. Nothing else in the wish changes. Chinese text uses full-width punctuation: the comma is ， and the exclamation mark ！.

For family

For friends

For work, with 您

How the wishes are built:

• 祝 zhù is "to wish someone well". It takes the person, then the wish: 祝你身体健康, "I wish you good health", is Wiktionary’s example. The same frame gives 祝你生日快乐, "happy birthday to you".
• 节日快乐 jiérì kuàilè is "happy festival": 节日 is any holiday or festival, so it suits a card when you are not sure what someone celebrates.
• 万事如意 wànshì rúyì is a set phrase, "may ten thousand things go as you wish", used for all kinds of good wishes.
• 圣诞快乐 and 圣诞节快乐 mean the same; the longer one adds 节, "festival".

圣诞快乐, word by word

圣诞 is "holy birth", and before it was Christmas it was the birthday of any holy figure. Taiwan’s Ministry of Education dictionary defines 聖誕 as the birthday of Confucius, the Buddha, a bodhisattva, Jesus or any deity people worship, and quotes Dream of the Red Chamber using it for the birthday of a god. CC-CEDICT still lists "the birthday of the reigning emperor" and "Confucius’ birthday" after "Christmas". 圣诞节 Shèngdànjié, with 节 "festival", is Christmas as a festival and as a season.

快乐 kuàilè is the ordinary word for "happy" in wishes: 生日快乐 is "happy birthday", 新年快乐 "happy New Year".

Saying it. All four syllables are fourth tones, which fall sharply from high to low, like a firm "No!" in English. Two more details:

• sh in shèng is said with the tongue curled back, as in English "shush" but further back. The e is a short "uh".
• 乐 has two readings. In 快乐 it is lè, "happy"; the same character is yuè in 音乐 yīnyuè, "music". 快乐 is never kuàiyuè.

How the tones work, and why they matter, is on the Mandarin tones.

The words of Christmas

Most of them are built from words a learner already has:

• 圣诞老人 is "the Christmas old man": 老人 is an elderly person.
• 平安夜 is "the peaceful night". 平安 píng'ān means "safe and sound, at peace", and the same three characters are the Chinese title of "Silent Night".
• 驯鹿 is "the tame deer": 驯 is "to tame". In Taiwan 驯 is said with a rising tone, xúnlù.
• 槲寄生 is "the oak parasite": 槲 is an oak and 寄生 "to live as a parasite", a fair description of mistletoe.
• 铃儿响叮当 is "the little bells ring ding-dong", the Chinese name of "Jingle Bells". The 儿 is not a separate syllable: it turns 铃 líng, "bell", into língr.

The apple on Christmas Eve: 平安果

On the mainland, people give each other apples on Christmas Eve, or eat one. The reason is a pun. Apple is 苹果 píngguǒ, and its first syllable sounds exactly like the 平 píng of 平安夜 Píng'ān Yè, Christmas Eve, and of 平安, "safe and well". So the apple is renamed 平安果 píng'ān guǒ, "the peace fruit", and eating one goes with a wish for the year ahead. Chinese Wikipedia dates the custom’s spread to the 2000s.

The custom is recent, and nobody knows when it began. Xinhua reported it from Lanzhou on 25 December 2006, quoting a young woman whose friends had told her she "must remember to eat a peace fruit on Christmas Eve", and said that young people had begun calling apples 平安果 "since who knows when". By 2011 Xinhua was relaying the South China Morning Post’s view that the apple was perhaps the best example of the mainland making a foreign festival its own.

In Taiwan and Hong Kong

Taiwan and Hong Kong write traditional characters, so the greeting is 聖誕快樂. It is read the same way in Mandarin.

聖誕 or 耶誕: Taiwan’s second name for Christmas

Taiwan also uses 耶誕節 Yēdànjié, "the birth festival of Jesus", taking 耶 from 耶穌 Yēsū, Jesus. CC-CEDICT marks it as Taiwanese, and Wiktionary as "chiefly Taiwan". Taiwan’s Ministry of Education dictionary defines 耶誕節 as the festival marking Jesus’ birth and refers the reader to 聖誕節. Taiwan’s own dictionary, then, treats 聖誕節 as the main entry.

The name goes back to an order from the government in the 1960s. Taiwan was then under Chiang Kai-shek, and the order said that 聖 "sage" in Chinese culture meant Confucius and Mencius. Jesus was not part of Chinese culture, so the festival should be 耶誕節, not 聖誕節. Chinese Wikipedia dates the order to 1966, citing a Taipei newspaper of 24 December that year. A column by the Taiwanese journalist 威克 on BBC News Chinese in 2017 says only "about fifty years ago". Both say the public never took up the change: Christmas sales and events under the name 聖誕 came back. The BBC column adds that the media and government kept 耶誕節. Today the two names are used side by side. New Taipei City’s Christmas fair, held every year since 2011, is the 歡樂耶誕城, the "happy Christmas town".

Subtitles favour 聖誕 by a wide margin even in traditional characters. Counting every word that begins with either name (聖誕, 聖誕節, 聖誕樹 and so on, against 耶誕, 耶誕節 and the rest), the traditional-character list has 22 uses of 聖誕 for every one of 耶誕. The simplified list has 56 to one. The traditional list is all subtitles written in traditional characters, Hong Kong’s as well as Taiwan’s, and Hong Kong says 聖誕 (it is even the government’s name for the holiday), so it cannot show how Taiwan alone divides.

Cantonese: sing3 daan3 faai3 lok6

In Hong Kong the greeting is the same four characters, 聖誕快樂, read in Cantonese. The CC-Canto dictionary gives it as sing3 daan3 faai3 lok6 in Jyutping, the standard romanisation of Cantonese. The numbers are Cantonese tones, which do not match Mandarin ones. Christmas itself is 聖誕節 sing3 daan3 zit3, and Santa is 聖誕老人 sing3 daan3 lou5 jan4. The difference between the two languages is on Mandarin vs Cantonese.

Is Christmas a holiday in China?

It depends on where you are.

• Mainland China: no. The State Council’s list of national public holidays, last revised in November 2024, names seven: New Year’s Day, the Spring Festival, Qingming, Labour Day, the Dragon Boat Festival, Mid-Autumn and National Day. Christmas is not among them, and 25 December is a working day. It is still widely marked in shops, restaurants and city centres, mostly as a commercial and social occasion.
• Hong Kong: yes, two days. Christmas Day, 25 December, and the first weekday after Christmas Day, 26 December, are general holidays. In 2026 they fall on a Friday and a Saturday. The Chinese name of the second one is 聖誕節後第一個周日, in which 周日 means "weekday", not "Sunday" as it would in Mandarin.
• Taiwan: yes again, from 2025, but not as Christmas. 25 December is 行憲紀念日 Xíngxiàn Jìniànrì, Constitution Day, the anniversary of the Constitution of the Republic of China taking effect on 25 December 1947. It was a day off from 1963. Government offices stopped closing for it in 2001, when the five-day week came in, though some workers still had the day off. A law promulgated on 28 May 2025 made it a national day off again, so 25 December is a holiday in Taiwan, under the name of the constitution rather than of Christmas.

Happy New Year: 新年快乐, and Chinese New Year

新年快乐 xīnnián kuàilè is "happy New Year". It works on 1 January, which is 元旦 Yuándàn, and it can also be said at Chinese New Year. Chinese New Year has its own name, 春节 Chūnjié, "the Spring Festival", and a set of greetings of its own. Those are on Chinese New Year greetings in Mandarin, Cantonese and Shanghainese.

How often do Chinese films say them?

圣诞快乐 is said 15.4 times per million words in Mandarin subtitles. 新年快乐 is said 6.1 times, so Christmas wishes outnumber New Year wishes 2.5 to one on screen. Those figures, and the nine-language comparison they come from, are on Merry Christmas and Happy New Year in 9 languages. Here are the other words of the season, in the same list of about 85 million words:

Each figure is per million words of the simplified-character list. Three things the counts show:

• Santa is said more often than the greeting itself. 圣诞老人 comes up 16.2 times per million words, slightly more than 圣诞快乐. That is a lot of Santa, in a collection that is mostly translated English-language film and television.
• 平安夜 is the commoner name for Christmas Eve. It is said 1.5 times as often as 圣诞夜, though the count also includes every mention of the carol.
• Reindeer and sleighs beat Christmas trees, but not only at Christmas: 驯鹿 is every reindeer in every nature film, and 雪橇 every sledge and bobsleigh.

How these were counted, and what that cannot show. The Chinese lists were cut into words before they were counted, and only words the cutting kept whole can be counted: 圣诞老人 and 平安夜 survived as single words, but 平安果 never appears, and a wish like 祝你圣诞快乐 was split into pieces. Most of the subtitles are translations of English-language films, so the counts show what translators wrote for Western films more than how families in Beijing talk.

Learn the language behind the greeting

A greeting is the first sentence of a language. Verbavia teaches Mandarin from the most common words up, characters and tones included, a lesson a day, free on the web. The most common Mandarin words are free to browse, with pinyin.

The same greeting in Spanish, with card wishes and the words of the season, is Merry Christmas in Spanish. Christmas, birthdays and toasts in Shanghainese, beside Mandarin and Cantonese, are on happy birthday in Shanghainese, and other wishes. The days of the week are on days of the week in Chinese, and the characters you will meet most on the most common Chinese characters.

The greetings for the Lunar New Year that follows, the Year of the Goat, with the 2027 dates, are on Chinese New Year 2027 greetings in Mandarin.

Merry Christmas has its own page in French, Italian, German and Portuguese too.

Sources

• CC-CEDICT, cc-cedict.org (also served by MDBG): 圣诞 (Christmas; the emperor’s and Confucius’ birthdays), 圣, 诞, 快乐, 乐 (lè happy, yuè music), 音乐, 圣诞节, 圣诞快乐, 新年快乐, 生日快乐, 祝, 您, 你们, 全家, 天天, 开心, 节日, 万事如意, 感谢, 支持, 大家, 平安夜 (Christmas Eve and "Silent Night"), 平安, 苹果, 圣诞老人, 老人, 圣诞树, 礼物, 圣诞卡, 贺卡, 圣诞帽, 雪人, 驯鹿 and 驯 (Taiwan pronunciation xún), 雪橇, 槲寄生, 槲, 寄生, 铃, 响, 叮当, 耶稣, 耶诞节 (marked Taiwan), 元旦, 春节 and 周日 (in dialect, "weekday"), with their pinyin.
• Ministry of Education (Taiwan), Revised Mandarin Chinese Dictionary (重編國語辭典修訂本), through moedict.tw: 聖誕 (the birthday of Confucius, the Buddha, a bodhisattva, Jesus or a deity, with the Dream of the Red Chamber quotation), 聖誕節 (also called 耶誕節), 耶誕節 and 聖誕夜 (the night of 24 December).
• Wiktionary: 聖誕快樂 (with 聖誕節快樂 as a synonym), 新年快樂 (used on 1 January or at Chinese New Year), 耶誕節 ("chiefly Taiwan") and 祝 (the example 祝你身體健康).
• Wikipedia, Standard Chinese phonology: the fourth tone as a fall from high to low, and sh as a retroflex consonant.
• CC-Canto, cantonese.org: Jyutping for 聖誕快樂, 聖誕節 and 聖誕老人.
• 莫华英 (Mo Huaying), “平安夜”吃“平安果”，圣诞节也在“中国化”, Xinhua, Lanzhou, 25 December 2006, reprinted by Sohu on 26 December 2006: the apple custom, the pun on 苹 and 平, and that nobody knows when it began.
• 平安夜吃苹果 圣诞节中国化, Xinhua’s translation of a South China Morning Post report of 23 December 2011, reprinted by NetEase on 24 December 2011: the apple as the best example of the festival made Chinese, and 铃儿响叮当 as the title of "Jingle Bells".
• 威克, 台灣講古：聖誕節為什麼成了耶誕節？, BBC News 中文, 21 December 2017 (an opinion column): the order under Chiang Kai-shek to rename the festival 耶誕節, its reasoning, and the media and government keeping the name.
• Chinese Wikipedia, 聖誕節, sections on the name, the mainland, Taiwan and Hong Kong: the date 1966 for that order, citing 自立晚報 of 24 December 1966; the two names used side by side; New Taipei’s 歡樂耶誕城 since 2011; Christmas on the mainland as a commercial and social occasion; and the giving of apples on Christmas Eve spreading from the 2000s.
• Chinese Wikipedia, 行憲紀念日: Constitution Day a holiday from 1963, government offices no longer closing from 2001 with the five-day week, some workers keeping the day off under the Labor Standards Act, and the restoration in 2025.
• Laws & Regulations Database of the Republic of China (Taiwan), 紀念日及節日實施條例 (Act on the Implementation of Memorial Days and Holidays), promulgated 28 May 2025: Article 3 (行憲紀念日, 25 December) and Article 4 (a day off).
• State Council of the People’s Republic of China, 全国年节及纪念日放假办法 (Measures on National Holidays and Memorial Days), fourth revision of 10 November 2024, in force from 1 January 2025: the seven holidays for all citizens.
• Hong Kong SAR Government, General holidays for 2026 and the Chinese version: Christmas Day on 25 December and the first weekday after Christmas Day (聖誕節後第一個周日) on 26 December.
• Lison, P. & Tiedemann, J. (2016). OpenSubtitles2016: Extracting Large Parallel Corpora from Movie and TV Subtitles. Proceedings of LREC 2016. aclanthology.org
• Dave, H. FrequencyWords: frequency lists from OpenSubtitles 2018 for simplified (zh_cn) and traditional (zh_tw) Chinese, content licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. github.com. The counts are computed by scripts/frequency_reference.py and scripts/frequency_shengdan.py in Verbavia’s repository and printed from their output rather than typed.