by Kenneth Andrews

Created on: December 12, 2010   Last Updated: December 07, 2011

Christmas cards generate the most severe form of writer's block known to humanity. The human mind freezes like a rabbit in the headlights when faced with the prospect of writing a short, simple message in a greetings card to convey friendship and best wishes over the holiday season.

Add to this the fact that many people find themselves with dozens, even hundreds, of Christmas cards to write each year (friends, family, colleagues, etc) and the question of what to write in a Christmas card becomes a serious issue. If you just sign your name under the printed message, it becomes all too obvious that you've just formed a production line of signing cards, stuffing in envelopes, scribbling addresses and bunging the whole lot in a postbox. If you are the sort of person that does a mail merge to print out address labels, this looks even more uncaring!

On the other hand, if you have fifty people in your address book who deserve some kind of holiday recognition, then you can't write a bespoke essay to each of them, or you'd need to start at Easter! So what should you be writing in a Christmas card?

Christmas card manufacturers want to help you. Many cards come with a pre-printed message, perhaps a little poem about the gift of love and Baby Jesus, or perhaps just a stark "Season's Greetings". If you are likely to err on the side of brevity in your message, it is best to use pre-printed cards. Blank cards 'for your own message' sound like a lovely idea, but if you end up just signing your name and scribbling a terse 'have a good one, yeah?' then the expanse of white space looks all the more accusing.

Good messages to write tend to be quite generic: "Wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year" might be a bit of a bind if you have to write it out fifty times, but it does the job. If you are writing to someone who you know is not particularly interested in the religious aspects of the holiday season you can refine to "Best wishes for 2011!"

The essential thing is to keep it simple. Even something like "Merry Christmas" might be a brief message to write alongside your name and the name of the recipient, but it still looks as though you've taken the time to think about your friend, rather than just scribbling a couple of names and crossing them from the list.

People overthink things like Christmas cards. In today's hectic world, many of us are too busy to really devote days to crafting personal messages to absolutely everyone we've ever

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