Funny Christmas Card Messages
Thirty cards on the table and you’ve written “Merry Christmas, love from” thirty times
Somewhere around card eleven the hand goes and the brain follows. You’re now signing your own name wrong and you’ve three more to do for people at work whose surname you’re guessing at.
Everything below is sorted by who’s getting it, because that’s the only sorting that helps at eleven at night with a glass of something and a pen that’s on its way out.
Three questions, and they take about five seconds
1. Are they going to read it in front of other people?
Cards on a mantelpiece get read by visitors, in-laws and children. A card that’s genuinely filthy is a card somebody has to hide, and they’ll still laugh, but it goes in a drawer rather than up on the shelf.
Posted to their house is a different card from handed over in an office.
2. How much do you actually like them?
That sounds harsh and it’s the most useful question on the page. An insult only works if it’s obviously affectionate, and it’s only obviously affectionate if the person already knows where they stand with you.
Take the mickey out of your best mate. Be warm at your aunt. Getting those two the wrong way round is the classic Christmas card error.
3. Is this the only contact you’ll have with them all year?
For a good number of people on a Christmas card list, it is. A card to somebody you never see isn’t a joke delivery system. It’s a “you’re still on the list” signal, and it wants one warm sentence in it somewhere, even if the rest is abuse.
Funny Christmas card messages for friends
The broad middle of the list. Warm, a bit rude, nothing that needs explaining afterwards.
- Another year survived. Barely, in your case.
- Let’s do this properly and regret it together.
- Hope your Christmas is exactly as chaotic as you deserve.
- Here’s to a January we’ll both pretend we planned for.
- Christmas card. Obligation discharged. Love you though.
- Wishing you the peace and quiet you absolutely won’t get.
- From someone who remembered. Just.
- May your food be hot and your relatives be brief.
- Season’s greetings. That’s the formal bit out of the way.
- Two days off and a fridge full of cheese. Take the win.
Funny Christmas card messages for your best friend
The one place you can be genuinely horrible, because there’s no chance at all of being misread. The trick is one line of real warmth at the end, which makes everything above it land as affection rather than as a list of complaints.
- You’re the worst decision I keep making.
- To the only person who knows what I actually did in March.
- I’d say I got you a card because I care. I got you a card because you’d notice.
- Another year of being each other’s bad idea. Same again?
- You’re an absolute state and I wouldn’t change a thing.
- Merry Christmas. Delete the photos.
- Cheers to a year of terrible advice, most of it mine.
Funny Christmas card messages for family
Harder than friends, because the audience is wider and somebody will read it out loud. Aim at the day rather than at the person and you can be as sharp as you like without anyone taking it personally.
- I’ve already agreed with whatever you’re about to say.
- Let’s all pretend the seating plan wasn’t discussed for a week.
- Nobody mention the parking.
- To the family. Loud, late, and mine.
- This year I’m hiding in the kitchen with the good stuff.
- Same time, same arguments, same trifle nobody eats.
- I’ll do the washing up if you do the small talk.
- Wishing you a Christmas where the oven timings work out. They won’t.
For a brother or a sister
- Merry Christmas from the favourite.
- Thirty-odd years and you still open presents like an animal.
- We both know who Mum rings first.
- You were a nightmare then and you’re a nightmare now. Consistent.
- I’m telling them it was your idea.
Funny Christmas card messages for coworkers
The highest-risk cards on the list, and the ones people rush. Anything about money, anything about the boss, and anything about how much somebody drank at the party is a card that outlives its own joke, because it sits on a desk in an open-plan office until February.
Aim at the shared experience instead. Everybody in that building had the same year.
- See you in the new year. Same chair, same problems.
- From the desk opposite. Enjoy the silence.
- Wishing you a Christmas with no calendar invites in it.
- Nobody’s checking emails. Nobody.
- We got through it, which was the target.
- Have a proper break. You’ve done the year.
- Back on the fourth, allegedly.
For Secret Santa, when the card IS the present
A budget of a fiver and a name you pulled out of a mug. Leaning into how little you know them is funnier than pretending you do.
- I asked around about you and got very little.
- Five pounds well spent. Somewhere. Not here.
- Hope this is exactly what you didn’t want.
- You got me. I’m the one by the window who never speaks.
Funny Christmas card messages for dad
Google lists dad and doesn’t list mum. Whatever the reason, dads are easy: pick the thing he does every single year without fail.
- Yes, we know how much the turkey weighed.
- To the man who falls asleep at three and denies it at four.
- Don’t do the carving speech again. Do the carving speech again.
- From your least disappointing child. Probably.
- Dad, the tin of biscuits isn’t a savings account. Open it.
- I’ve hidden the remote.
And for mum, since nobody else writes these
- Sit down. You’ve done enough. Sit DOWN.
- This year we’re doing the washing up. Say yes.
- Thanks for pretending to like the candle.
Funny Christmas card messages for your wife, husband or partner
The one card that gets read twice and then kept. Rude is fine, but this is the card where the last line should be true, because they’ll find it again in a drawer in four years.
- To the person who does the presents for both our families.
- Another Christmas with you. Still my best decision, and I’ve made some shockers.
- I got you something. It’s in the boot. It’s been in the boot since November.
- Twelve months of putting up with me and you’ve barely complained. Barely.
- I’ll do the sprouts. That’s my entire offer.
- To the love of my life and the worst wrapper of presents I’ve ever met.
- Let’s leave early and blame the traffic.
When they’ve had a rough year
The section every other page on this subject skips, and the reason it’s here is simple: a Christmas card is the one piece of post that arrives whether or not anybody’s been in touch. For somebody who lost a job in March or moved out in July, the card isn’t decoration. It’s evidence that they were thought about.
The failure mode here isn’t being too dark. It’s being generic. “Wishing you all the best for the new year”, written to somebody who’s had an appalling twelve months, reads as a form letter. Acknowledge it in half a sentence and then move on, which is what most people actually want.
- What a year. Genuinely glad you’re still standing.
- Not your finest twelve months. Here’s to a boring one.
- Christmas anyway.
- You had a shocker and you handled it better than I would have.
- Wishing you the dullest, most uneventful new year imaginable.
- This one’s just to say you were thought about.
- Rough year. Good person. Both things are true.
- Here’s to next year being somebody else’s turn.
If the rough year was redundancy, a divorce or a spell in hospital, the same instinct applies and we’ve written the longer version of it: what to say to someone made redundant, what to say to someone going through a divorce, and what to write in a get well card.
When you’ve left it far too late
Second class has gone, first class is optimistic, and you’re writing this on the twenty-second. Own it. A card that admits it’s late beats a card that pretends otherwise.
- Posted with enormous confidence and very little time.
- Late card. Early apology.
- If this arrives before the twenty-fifth, we never speak of it.
- Happy Christmas, eventually.
- Consider this a New Year card that got ambitious.
- The stamp cost more than the card. Enjoy it properly.
The cards we print
Ours do the joke on the front, so the inside is blank and the words above are yours. Sixteen Christmas designs, printed and posted in the UK.
- This year I got you nothing. Again. You little shit.
- Your present is in the post. It isn’t.
- I got roped into Secret Santa. So I got you this card.
- Christmas is about the children. No. It’s about the Baileys.
- Mum still likes me more. She’s not said anything. But she doesn’t need to.
- Next year you’re making the dinner. And I’m fucking eating it.
- You’ve been good this year. By your standards.
- I don’t know who you are. I’ve spent accordingly.
- Happy Christmas from your emergency contact. Please stop testing that.
- You don’t like Christmas. You like two days off.
Still need the card itself?
We make funny and rude Christmas cards for people who’ve run out of ways to write “Merry Christmas” and mean it.
Blank inside, so everything on this page is yours to use. Printed and posted in the UK.