A gender-neutral Santa Claus is among the latest batch of emojis to be released, however the US consortium behind the animated symbols has been criticised for failing to add mixed-race families.

A mustachioed-man in a wedding dress, a non-binary person holding a child and the transgender flag were also created alongside new festive Mrs Claus and Mx Claus emojis, as part of 117 new graphics unveiled this week.

The move comes as Unicode, a consortium of tech giants which decides on which new emojis are created each year, has struggled with accusations its creations are not ethnically diverse and pander to traditional gender stereotypes.

Philip Seargeant, a senior lecturer of applied linguistics at the Open University who has written a book on emojis, said the consortium had made a concerted effort in recent years to nix the criticism by adding more diverse symbols.

He said: “When Unicode first started getting criticism, it was very skewed particularly with gender roles, then also with racial skin tones. Since then they have made a huge effort year-by-year to bring that more in line with the values liberal western society.

“But representing all identity groups is a challenge as there will always be some identity group that feels under represented. We are living through an age of culture wars and you are going to always overlook someone - or do it in the wrong way.”

In recent years, Unicode has added options where people can choose the skin tone of their emojis, as well as adding gender-neutral characters.