Santa Claus is painted close up, his face and upper body filling most of the frame and turned slightly toward the viewer. Round wire-rim glasses sit above gently crinkled, smiling eyes, and a full white beard, a fur-trimmed red hat with a drooping tip and a red coat are rendered loosely, with a taupe sack glimpsed over one shoulder. Behind him, a snow-dusted pine forest dissolves into soft, abstracted shapes.

The watercolor is worked wet-on-wet, with pigments blooming and feathering where they meet and flecks of bare paper reading as falling snow. Paper tooth and granulation show through the soft wash edges, and there are no hard outlines, only a diffused, overcast winter light.