What to Write in a Christmas Card for Your Best Friend

Here's what to write in a Christmas card for your best friend, sorted by how you feel this year: short, funny, sentimental, for a friend far away, and for a year that was hard. Every line was written for this page. Copy the one that sounds like you, or use the three-step formula at the end to write your own in two minutes. The best card is almost always the one with something in it only the two of you understand.

Short, for a small card

Merry Christmas to my favorite person.

With you, the whole year feels a little like December.

Thank you for another year of putting up with me.

You've always been my favorite gift.

Another Christmas, and you're still my home base.

The best part of my year fits in one name: yours.

Funny

I was going to get you something you really need, but you already have me.

Merry Christmas to the one person who knows everything and still answers my texts.

This year I promise not to spoil the end of the show. I promise nothing else.

Thank you for laughing at my bad jokes all year. Here's another one: Merry Christmas.

We're like the tree lights: tangled up, but when we turn on, we really turn on.

I'd say I got you something special, but let's be honest, you'll open it in front of me and make that face.

Sentimental

I don't know who I'd be without you, and I never want to find out.

Thank you for staying for the ugly days. The pretty ones are easy.

Some people come into your life to teach you something. You came to stay.

If I had to choose a best friend all over again, I'd choose you. Every time.

You're the family I got to pick.

Thank you for knowing what's wrong before I say a word.

For a friend far away

We live far apart, but our group chat says otherwise.

This Christmas I'm raising a glass to you from here. Raise one to me from there, at the same time.

Distance never stood a chance against us. Airfare did, but not distance.

The time zones changed. The inside jokes didn't.

We go weeks without talking and pick up mid-sentence. A friendship like a cactus doesn't need watering every day.

Save me a seat at your table next year. I'm coming.

For a year that was hard

This year tested us. You passed every test.

I don't need to fix anything for you. I just want to be there.

If next year gets hard, you know where to find me.

You don't have to be okay for it to be Christmas. I'm here either way.

What I most want to give you doesn't fit in a box: a gentler year.

Write your own in two minutes

This formula never misses:

1. One memory from this year. Just one, and make it specific: "the night the power went out and we ended up singing", "our Saturday coffee".
2. One thank-you. For something she did, not for "being you".
3. One plan. Something with a date in the new year.

For example:

This year I keep thinking about the night the power went out and we sang by phone flashlight. Thank you for turning even a blackout into a good memory. In March we're going to the beach, and I'm not taking excuses.

To go with the card

If the card comes with a gift, here are ideas for Christmas gifts for your best friend. And for the gift itself, eight free printable Christmas gift tags with Capy and Bara.

If you'd rather the words stay up on a wall, we make prints of Capy and Bara, two capybara best friends, with lines like the one in the photo, where Pincho, Capy's cactus, wears string lights under the words "Our tree is small. Our friendship isn't." Add your names, pick the color, and collect it with Same Day Pickup at a store near you, or have it mailed free to any address in the 50 states. See the prints.