Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays or Season's Greetings on a Business Card?

Short answer: for a client list you do not know well, "Season's Greetings" or "Happy Holidays." For a list you know, "Merry Christmas" to the people who celebrate it. And if the question is costing you sleep, there are two cards that never have to answer it.

Here is the reasoning, and the one number worth knowing.

Most people genuinely do not mind

Pew Research asked this directly in a national survey of 1,503 adults, fielded November 29 to December 4, 2017. Asked how they would like stores and businesses to greet customers, 52% said it doesn't matter to them. 32% preferred "Merry Christmas."

That is a question about a store, not a card, but it is the closest measurement there is, and it says two useful things. Half your list will not register the choice at all. And among the people who do care, more of them want "Merry Christmas" than want something vaguer.

Which is why this is not the hard question it gets made into. It is a small question with one right answer per relationship.

When "Season's Greetings" is the right call

A client list is not one household. Unless your book is small and old, you do not actually know what every person on it celebrates, and in a professional relationship you are not supposed to.

"Season's Greetings" and "Happy Holidays" cover Christmas, Hanukkah and the New Year in one line. Nobody has to be guessed about. For a firm mailing a few hundred cards to people it knows through work, that is the default, and it is a perfectly warm one.

When "Merry Christmas" is the right call

When you know. A client you have had dinner with, whose kids you have heard about for ten years, gets the greeting you would say to them in person.

When it is who you are. If your firm is plainly and openly Christian, a neutral greeting can read as holding back, and the people who chose you partly for that will notice.

When the card goes home. A family card, or a business card going to a client's house rather than their office, follows the same rule as any other card between people. Say what you mean.

What does not work is choosing "Merry Christmas" to make a point. The card is for the person opening it, not for the argument.

You can do both

The front of the card is part of the design. Some fronts say "Merry Christmas" in the artwork and some say nothing at all, so look at the front before you think about the verse. Every design's own page shows it, whether you start in Christmas cards or in the business holiday and seasonal collections.

The inside is yours. Pick a verse from our library or write your own, and if your list splits cleanly, it can be two lists with two verses. More work when you order. None at the mailbox.

Two cards that never have to answer the question

Thanksgiving. A card that says thank you for the year is the most business-appropriate message on the calendar, it belongs to no faith, and it arrives in a mailbox that is nearly empty. The case for it is in Thanksgiving Instead of Christmas.

New Year. A card in the first week of January lands on a desk being cleared rather than buried, and "here's to the year ahead" has never offended anyone.

What matters more than the greeting

The greeting is one printed line. Nobody keeps a card for it.

What they remember is the line in your handwriting and the name under it. Get those right and the greeting question shrinks to what it really is, which is a choice of font. The advice on that line is in What to Write in a Business Thanksgiving Card, and it holds just as well in December.