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In this article, the holiday card experts at Minted share how to write a Christmas letter that feels warm, full of personality, and never braggy. We cover writing tips, etiquette, and why holiday letters are more important than ever this year.
For generations, holiday cards have carried more than a photograph or a seasonal greeting. They’ve carried news. A note from your grandmother tucked inside the same kind of card she sends every year. A few handwritten sentences from a friend you don’t see enough. A full-page letter recounting a family’s moves, milestones, trips, graduations, first birthdays, and everything that happened in between.
There’s something increasingly rare about receiving a few words written specifically for you, which is why including a handwritten letter can be a beautiful way to make your Christmas or holiday cards more meaningful. The letter doesn’t have to be long—or even technically a letter. What matters is taking the time to share something from the heart.
Here, we share everything you need to know to write a holiday letter of your own.
What is a Holiday Letter?
Traditionally, holiday letters are longer messages that are included with Christmas and holiday cards. These letters are usually about a page long, typed, and are a way to share the highlights of your year that go beyond the shorter well-wish or message printed on your Christmas card itself.
Today, Christmas letters can be paragraphs long or just a few short lines that make your holiday card feel a little bit more meaningful. Here are a few different forms a holiday letter can take:
- A Christmas note just for them. A holiday letter doesn’t have to summarize your year to mean something. If you have space on your holiday cards, jot down a few handwritten lines to the people closest to you. Ask about their family, reference a shared memory, or simply tell them you miss them.
- One story from the year. You don’t have to share every highlight from the year if you don’t want to. Instead, share the memory you’ll cherish most: a family road trip, your daughter’s first day of school, the summer when everyone learned to swim, or when your new house finally started feeling like a home.
- A year in review. This is the most traditional format a holiday letter can take, and there’s still something wonderful about documenting births, birthdays, graduations, weddings, trips, new jobs, and all of the small moments in between. The key here is to treat it less like a résumé of accomplishments, and more like an update for someone you care about.
How to Write a Holiday Letter: A Step-by-Step Guide
There’s no single right way to write a holiday letter. But there are a few things you can do to make writing feel less intimidating, especially if you’re out of practice putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard).
Step 1: Choose Your Recipients
Who you’re writing to will inform both the tone and content of your holiday letter, so be sure to think about your audience in advance. Knowing if you’re addressing your close friends or your extended family can impact what you want to share, and how you want to share it.
Step 2: Decide What Story You Want to Tell
If you’re opting for a more traditional, year-in-review-style letter, think about the key moments you want to include. Don’t feel like you need to catalogue every single thing that happened to your family — the sweet spot is typically three to seven short anecdotes. You could even focus on just one favorite memory or major milestone.
Step 3: Open With Warmth
Start your Christmas card letter by directly addressing your recipient. Share a warm holiday greeting and a quick well-wish before moving on to the stories you want to share about your year.
Step 4: Draft Your Letter
The blank page can be intimidating. One of the best ways to beat writer's block is to allow yourself to simply write without judgment. So after you have your opening down, focus on drafting your letter and telling the stories you want to include without editing as you write. You can come back and clean things up after you get everything on the page.
Step 5: Close With Love
Wrap up your holiday letter by shifting the focus back to your recipients again. If you’re writing individual letters, include a specific memory from the year you shared with them or something you’re looking forward to doing with them in the year to come. If you’re writing a letter that will go out to a broader group of people, close with something you wish for their families during the festive season or year.
Step 6: Write Like You Talk
Even traditional holiday letters don’t have to be overly formal. Focus on keeping your Christmas note conversational by writing like you speak. Keep sentences and paragraphs short, but don’t be afraid to let your personality shine through! Ideally, your letter will be polished (no typos!), but don’t stress about it being absolutely perfect.
Step 7: Edit for Clarity & Length
After you have a draft of your holiday letter down, walk away from it for as long as you can (a few hours or even a few days) so you can edit it with fresh eyes. If you’re working on a more traditional holiday letter, aim to keep it under one typed page long. After you’ve done your editing pass, always go back through it one more time to scan for typos before you hit print.
What to Include: Holiday Letter Content Ideas (That Aren’t Braggy)
When thinking about what to include in your holiday letter, start by considering what you actually want your recipients to know. You don’t have to share anything just because you feel like you should; lead with what you’re most excited about.
Here are a few Christmas letter ideas:
- Life milestones, like a new baby, a move, a new job, or graduation
- Family activities
- Your children’s current favorite things
- A memory from a trip you took this year
- A new pet
- A work highlight or achievement
- Hobbies you love, either as an individual or as a family
- Major life news, such as deaths, divorces, etc.
What not to include in a Christmas letter:
- Sensitive information about your family members that they may not want to share publicly
- Medical oversharing
- Divisive or political topics
- Interpersonal conflict/drama
- Financial information
Worried about your Christmas letter coming across as bragging? Keeping the focus on how grateful you are for all of the good things in your life and telling stories about how your family’s achievements felt can make milestones feel warm instead of flashy. For example, “Morgan dedicated herself to leveling up at work this year, and she couldn’t be more proud of her new role as assistant director. She celebrated a job well done with a hard-earned trip to Spain!” comes across as warm and informative. Meanwhile, “Morgan received her third promotion in as many years this year and used her large signing bonus to fly first-class to Spain,” may be received as bragging.
Holiday Letter Format & Length
Aim to keep your holiday letter to a single side of standard letter-size paper. Depending on the font and format you use, this means your letter could be anywhere from 200 to 500 words. If you have a very large family and can’t cover everyone’s milestones or updates on a single page, aim to fit everyone within two pages (your recipients may not read much past that!).
That said, not every holiday letter needs to be long! A Christmas note that is a few short paragraphs, or even a handful of sentences, is a great way to personalize your Christmas cards.
Format Ideas
Don’t feel like your holiday letter has to be constrained to formal letter-writing rules. There are lots of fun ways to format your Christmas letter, including:
- Person-by-person, where each family member gets a dedicated paragraph or sentence
- A family “newspaper” with multiple short stories about what your family did this year
- Month-by-month, where you share the highlights that happened across the year
- A Q&A-style interview where you ask each member of your family a few of the same questions to show off everyone’s unique personalities
Holiday Letter Examples You Can Borrow From
Here’s how all of the tips we’ve shared so far come together in real-life holiday letters.
Classic
Best for: Sending to extended family, friends, and acquaintances.
Happy Holidays from the Mann Family!
I hope the festive season is treating you well, and that you’re reading this letter with your favorite holiday treat on hand.
This has been a year of big changes for us! We became parents in April, and our daughter Mina is the light of our life. She’s been on the move since day one, and now that she’s started crawling, we can barely keep up! She loves to explore, hates a nap (why sleep when there’s so much to see and do?), and is equal parts sassy and sweet.
In July, we took our first trip as a family, braving back-to-back weddings in New York and Denver. We had so much fun introducing Mina to our family and friends and will forever cherish the memories of simply taking a break as a little family of three on a bench in Central Park.
We moved into our first home in November, and I’ve been busy juggling going back to work after maternity leave with settling into our new space and routine. I’m loving designing our new space (even if I’m typing this from a construction zone), and am so excited to create memories of Mina’s early years in our home by the beach.
Cyrus is loving his new role as full-time dad, but is very happy to be back in full swing at both tennis and hockey after breaking his collarbone last year. His hockey team won the championship this summer, and he’s looking forward to perfecting his serve on the tennis court this winter.
We hope that next year will be slightly less eventful—but no less full of things to be grateful for. Sending your family love, hugs, and all of the fudge you can eat this holiday season!
Cheers!
Phoebe, Cyrus, & Mina
Funny
Best for: Sending to close friends and extended family who get your sense of humor.
Happy Holidays!
I’m writing this letter in between diaper changes and Zoom calls, while Mina practices squealing at astonishing decibels and Cyrus is taking a hard-earned 10-minute break from baby wrangling. Life has been more than a little bit chaotic — who told us that buying our first home and taking on a renovation project with an eight-month-old would be easy?? (Literally no one.)
All jokes aside, we wouldn’t have chosen to do this year any other way. That said, I’m hoping next year will be slightly less eventful…and maybe more full of sleep.
Wishing you peace, joy, and (hopefully!) silent nights.
Love,
Phoebe, Cyrus, and Mina.
Short
Best for: Sending to friends and family you keep in touch with regularly, or if you’re short on space.
Happy Holidays from the Mann Family! Here’s what we’ve been up to this year:
Phoebe: Returned to work after giving birth to Mina this spring, and is still squeezing in reading a good book or two between running her business and being a new mom.
Cyrus: Went back to playing hockey and tennis after breaking his collarbone last year, and can’t wait to get Mina on the court.
Baby Mina: Perfected the art of rolling over, crawling, and stealing our hearts. She’s still working on sleeping through the night!
We hope your year has been as full of blessings as ours!
With love,
Phoebe, Cyrus, & Mina
Personalizing Your Holiday Letter for Family, Friends, and Loved Ones
Thinking about who you’re sending your holiday letter to can dictate both what you choose to share and how you choose to share it. If you’re primarily sending to close family and friends, you may be more comfortable being open about the highs and lows of your year, while if you’re sending your letter to a more mixed group of people, you might want to focus on the good.
If you’re sending holiday cards to a long list of friends, family, and acquaintances, it may make sense to craft a few versions of your letter.
- In the letter to your close family, you can talk more about the highs, lows, and everything in between that they might have missed.
- The letter to your friends could be more focused on sharing a single funny anecdote or short holiday message (you can check out this article to get inspired for the latter).
- Finally, the version going to your extended family and social group could take on a more traditional format.
Choosing Stationery & Letterhead for Your Holiday Letter
Once you’ve written your Christmas letter, it’s time to choose how you’d like to print it. If you’ve gone for a traditional page-long Christmas letter, printing it at home on standard paper is the easiest and most cost-effective option (you could choose to get it professionally printed on heavier paper, but know that it may increase the cost of postage you’ll need when mailing your holiday cards). You can make it feel a little bit special by…
- Creating a family crest or monogram and including it at the header or footer of your letter.
- Using a font that matches your holiday card
- Adding a border with elements that echo the design of your holiday cards.
If you’ve chosen to write a shorter holiday letter, you could include it on the back of your holiday card. Minted’s holiday card designs feature fully customizable back panels with plenty of space to include an extra photo or two along with your holiday letter.
Holiday Letter vs. Christmas Card Message: Which Should You Send?
A Christmas card message is the saying or wish printed on your Christmas or holiday card itself. Typically, Christmas card messages are a short sentence that focuses on expressing the joy of the holiday and wishing your recipients well.
A holiday letter, meanwhile, is longer and more personal. Typically, letters focus more on you and your family than the Christmas card message does, giving the recipient an update on what’s going on in your life.
Because Christmas card messages are printed on your holiday cards, everyone on your recipient list will receive it. Whether you choose to also send a holiday letter is up to you—although we always recommend it, as it adds an extra layer of thoughtfulness and connection to your cards.
Holidays from the Heart
A good holiday letter is really an honest, warm update told in your own voice. The photos you choose to feature on your holiday card show what this year looks like — the words you write can tell your family and friends what it felt like. Together, they create a lasting record of a particular moment in your family’s life.
Christmas letters turn holiday cards into a keepsake that, years from now, when the card is rediscovered in a box of mementos, can bring wonderful memories back.
Frequently Asked Questions about Holiday Letters
How long should a holiday letter be?
Aim to keep your holiday letter under one page typed. Most families will be able to share everyone’s milestones and updates in 150-500 words, although large and extended families may run longer.
Is it OK to type or print a holiday letter instead of handwriting it?
Yes! Holiday letters are most commonly typed and printed out, although we always recommend adding a short, handwritten line or two to personalize your letter to each recipient.
How do I avoid sounding like I'm bragging in my holiday letter?
Listing milestone after milestone and achievement after achievement can make any letter feel braggy rather than warm. To avoid this, focus on how each of your family wins feels and what it means to you instead of the achievements themselves.
Can I send a holiday letter by email instead of mail?
Emailing holiday letters is increasingly common, but we always prefer tucking a printed copy into your holiday cards for an extra-special analog touch.
