How to wrap in span tags in Wordpress function?

Question

PHP

Hello!
Wordpress has a function that displays the date of the post in the format - 02/12/2018 at 13:00

function theme_post_date( $date ) {    
    $date = get_the_time( 'd.m.Y \в\ G:i' );        
    return $date;
}

How to make the entire structure appear in span tags?
Thanks for the solution.

Answer 1

echo '<span>' . theme_post_date(some) . '</span>';

Answer 2

return '<span>' . $date . '</span>';
So it doesn't work?