What to Write in a Christmas Card That Earns a Fridge Spot

Christmas / Cards

Every December, the same four tiers land in your mailbox. Tier one: the dentist's card, a stock photo of a snowman wearing sunglasses, signed by nobody. Tier two: the family newsletter, four paragraphs about a promotion, a marathon, and a child the writer clearly finds impressive, set in a font usually reserved for wedding invitations.

Tier three: the staged card, matching pajamas, coordinated smiles, a golden retriever that was bribed and is still negotiating terms. And tier four, at the bottom of the pile, slightly crooked: a card a kid made, with a photo where a thumb covers the corner and a greeting that opens with the recipient's nickname instead of their name, plus one corner that's slightly damp for reasons nobody asks about.

Guess which one is still in the fridge in January. The dentist never had a chance.

The Family Card Photoshoot Is a Group Project

Like every group project, it has a roster. One person does all the work while giving instructions nobody follows, usually a parent, quite possibly you. Smile real. Not that smile, the real one. Take nine, somebody blinks. Take ten, somebody else blinks in solidarity. Take eleven, a sweater tag escapes. Take thirteen, one person has wandered off for a snack, as one person always does, and nobody has the energy to retrieve them. The dog is the only one doing it right, and isn't even trying.

Fourteen takes later, the winning frame gets turned in: printed on heavy cardstock, mailed to sixty households, and tossed by plenty of them before the new year. Nobody sets out to make disposable mail. But a card that's mostly an announcement tends to read like mail from an institution, and mail from institutions rarely earns a fridge spot.

Things to Write in a Christmas Card: Name, Memory, Wish

Most of us don't know what to write on a Christmas card, because the blank space asks for a speech, so we reach for word salad: wishing you and yours a joyous holiday season. It's technically warm and completely forgettable, and it never mentions the recipient once. It could be mailed to a stranger without changing a word, and sometimes is.

Kids skip the salad by accident. Hand a kid a card to write and the message comes out with the three parts adults overthink:

Name, one real memory, one wish. Notice what's missing: a thesis, a transition, and the phrase warmest wishes. A card like that almost never gets called nice, because nice is the word people use for the ones they threw away.

Let the Kid Shoot the Card, Skip the Matching Sweaters

Most Christmas card ideas start with a coordinated outfit. This one starts with a kid holding a camera. The myFirst Insta Lux instant kids camera lets the kid take the photo and prints it on the spot, so the card exists before anyone can demand a fourteenth take. The shot the kid picks is usually the one an adult would have deleted: everyone mid-sentence, the dog airborne, the tree slightly cut off, and the thumb, always the thumb. This is the tier four photo, and tier four wins.

The digital drawing pad for kids handles the border, the doodles, the snowmen along the edge, and the message gets written underneath by the kid, spelled however the kid spells. Expect at least one word underlined for emphasis and one crossed out for reasons nobody will explain. The whole production happens at the kitchen table in one evening, and the outtakes become gift tags. Nobody had to say a real smile even once.

Why Kids' Christmas Cards Win the Fridge Spot

Grandma's fridge is a museum with one permanent exhibit, and the exhibit is almost never the newsletter. It's the crooked card with the thumb in the corner, the one addressed to grandma by the nickname nobody uses in any professional setting, reporting accurately that the popcorn was too salty. It has outlasted three generations of snowman sunglasses, two newsletters about a marathon, and one dentist who has never eaten anything in that kitchen. The tape holding it has fossilized, and nobody will volunteer to remove it.

People tend to keep cards that sound like the person who sent them, which is a big reason kids' Christmas cards tend to win the spot. This year, let the kid shoot the photo, write the three lines, and mail it. The dentist can keep the sunglasses spot.

Next December the kid will want to start drafting in November.