Christmas

Christmas is a seasonal event that occurs from December to around early January. During Christmas, Presents can be dropped by any enemy ( chance), except for enemies spawned by statues. Hearts are also replaced by Candy Canes, and Mana Stars are replaced with Sugar Plums.

During Hardmode, one of the items a Present can contain is the Snow Globe, which summons the Frost Legion. Defeating the Frost Legion allows the Santa Claus NPC to spawn, if valid housing is available, but only during the Christmas season.

The duration of the event depends on the game platform:

Reaching wave 15 of the Frost Moon will unlock one in-game day and night of the Christmas event, regardless of the date. After this in-game day and night ends, a message pops up in the bottom left saying, ""

Tips

 * Christmas can be "activated" by setting the device's date to any date within the respective Christmas timespan.
 * Change the computer's date to any day between December 15th and 31st.
 * Disconnect from Xbox Live /  PSN and change the console time.
 * Disconnect from automatic date/time updates and change the time manually. Note that this does not work for some devices.
 * Go to "System Settings" and go to "Other Settings, click on "Date and Time", then "Today's Date" and "Current Time" and set the date and time there.
 * Go to "System Settings" and go to "System", click on "Date and Time", turn off "Synchronize Clock via Internet" and set the time there.
 * If a change of the device's time is undesired, applications like "RunAsDate" (Windows) or faketime (Linux, macOS) allow launching Terraria with a changed time and date.