What to Write in a Christmas Card — 50 Messages to Copy

The blank card is the hard part. The tree is up, the list is done, and then there are fourteen cards on the table and the only sentence anyone can think of is the one already printed inside.

What follows is fifty lines you can copy, grouped by who is actually going to read them — because what works for your sister does not work for a client, and the message for somebody who has had a difficult year is a different job again.

For family

• Merry Christmas. This house is at its best when everybody is in it.

  Copy

• Wishing you a Christmas as good as the ones you gave us.

  Copy

• Merry Christmas — thank you for a year of turning up, quietly and often.

  Copy

• However this year went, I am glad we got through it as this lot. Merry Christmas.

  Copy

• Merry Christmas. Eat too much, argue about the film, do it all again next year.

  Copy

• Wishing you a peaceful Christmas and a year that asks less of you than this one did.

  Copy

• Merry Christmas. You are the reason this time of year still means something.

  Copy

• Happy Christmas — save me a seat and something with brandy in it.

  Copy

• Merry Christmas to the people who know all my worst stories and invite me anyway.

  Copy

• Wishing you a warm Christmas and a slow, unhurried start to January.

  Copy

For a friend

• Merry Christmas. Another year survived, mostly thanks to you.

  Copy

• Happy Christmas to the friend who answers at eleven at night.

  Copy

• Merry Christmas. Same time next year, same nonsense, same table.

  Copy

• Wishing you a Christmas with nothing in it you have to be polite for.

  Copy

• Merry Christmas — thank you for a year of being extremely easy to talk to.

  Copy

• Happy Christmas. Distance has changed nothing, which I hope you know.

  Copy

• Merry Christmas to the person who has never once made me explain myself twice.

  Copy

• Wishing you a brilliant Christmas and a January that treats you gently.

  Copy

• Merry Christmas. You are the friendship I would choose again from scratch.

  Copy

• Happy Christmas — let us do something about seeing each other in the new year.

  Copy

For a teacher

• Merry Christmas, and thank you for a term of patience we did not always deserve.

  Copy

• Wishing you a restful Christmas — you have earned every day of it.

  Copy

• Merry Christmas. Thank you for noticing the things that are easy to miss.

  Copy

• Happy Christmas, and thank you for making a subject we dreaded into one we look forward to.

  Copy

• Wishing you a lovely Christmas break and a very quiet fortnight.

  Copy

• Merry Christmas. She has come home talking about your class all term.

  Copy

• Thank you for a year of encouragement that made a real difference. Merry Christmas.

  Copy

• Happy Christmas — enjoy a holiday with nobody asking you a single question.

  Copy

For a colleague, a boss or a client

• Merry Christmas, and thank you for a genuinely good year of working together.

  Copy

• Wishing you and your family a happy Christmas and a strong start to the new year.

  Copy

• Merry Christmas — it has been a pleasure working with you this year.

  Copy

• Thank you for your trust this year. Wishing you a restful Christmas.

  Copy

• Happy Christmas. Thank you for making a difficult project a straightforward one.

  Copy

• Wishing you a good break and a prosperous new year, with thanks for your support.

  Copy

• Merry Christmas to a team that made this year considerably easier than it might have been.

  Copy

• Season's greetings, and every good wish for the year ahead.

  Copy

Funny

• Merry Christmas. This card cost more than the present, so manage your expectations.

  Copy

• Happy Christmas! I have peaked at the wrapping. Sorry about the contents.

  Copy

• Merry Christmas — I have bought you something you will pretend to like. See you soon.

  Copy

• Wishing you the strength to survive your own family this Christmas. Mine are worse.

  Copy

• Merry Christmas. I wrote this in the shop car park. It is still sincere.

  Copy

• Happy Christmas to someone who definitely did not need another candle. Here is another candle.

  Copy

• Merry Christmas. Let us both pretend we sent these in good time.

  Copy

• Happy Christmas — may your batteries be included and your assembly instructions be in English.

  Copy

For someone who has had a hard year

These are the ones people get most wrong. The instinct is to be cheerful at somebody, and cheerfulness aimed at a person who has lost somebody lands as a request to perform. The better move is short, warm and undemanding — say you are thinking of them and stop.

• Thinking of you this Christmas, and not expecting anything back.

  Copy

• Christmas is hard when somebody is missing from it. I am thinking of you.

  Copy

• No cheer required. Just wanted you to know I am here, this week and after it.

  Copy

• Wishing you the gentlest possible Christmas, and a kinder year to follow.

  Copy

• I know this one will be difficult. Thinking of you, and of them.

  Copy

• Sending you love this Christmas, with no need to reply.

  Copy

Two lines beat one line

The single most common card is a greeting and a signature, and it reads as a duty discharged. Adding one specific sentence changes it entirely — not a general compliment, but the particular thing: the weekend they drove over, the thing they said that helped, the month they got through.

That is the whole trick, and it takes eight extra words. A card that names something real is the one that stays on the mantelpiece into January.

If you are writing fourteen of them

Write the hard ones first, while you still have the patience for them — the person who is grieving, the friend you have not called, the client who deserves better than a template. Do the easy ones last, when you are tired and a warm line will genuinely do.

And skip the year-in-review paragraph unless somebody has actually asked. Nobody has ever asked.

When the card cannot get there in time

Post has a cutoff and Christmas does not move. If the date has beaten you, the words above work just as well inside something that arrives instantly — an album of the year with a caption under each photograph, or a stack of wrapped boxes they open one at a time with your message at the bottom.

Free, about five minutes, no app for them to install, and the link stays live for 10 days: make one for them. There is more on the timing in what still works on Christmas Eve.