Corporate Christmas cards: what to send, what to write, and whether you still need one

In hundreds of businesses across the UK, someone's just realised the Christmas card list is on their, well, list. They're now trying to work out whether 400 printed cards is a warm gesture or £600 of recycling. Now that's boring maths.

Corporate Christmas cards sit in an odd spot. Nobody has ever complained about receiving one. Almost nobody remembers who sent them. This guide covers whether your business still needs one, how to decide between a card and a gift, and what to write when you do send.

Quick answer: Most businesses still send a Christmas card because it costs little and closes the year politely. A card works best as a standalone gesture for clients and suppliers, where the point is being remembered. For your own staff, a card on its own tends to land flat, because the people reading it know roughly what a card costs. Send one or the other with some thought behind it, rather than both on autopilot.

Do you still need a corporate Christmas card?

For clients and suppliers, usually yes. Why not, basically. A card is cheap, it's low risk, and it arrives in a season when being remembered is the whole job. Nobody has ever lost an account over a Christmas card.

For your own team, it's a fair question. A card addressed to "all staff" and signed with a printed signature isn't really a message. It's a formality your people probably don't hugely care about. 

Here's the honest version, and Huggg sells gifts rather than cards so we have no reason to tell you this: a well-written card beats a thoughtless gift. A team can tell the difference between someone who wrote something and someone who approved a design. If your budget this year is genuinely nothing, write properly to people. That works.

What doesn't work is the middle. A generic card taped to a generic gift is two gestures cancelling each other out.

Card, gift, or both?

A rule that holds up most of the time:

• Card only: Clients, suppliers, partners, anyone outside the business where the relationship is professional and the point is to be remembered. Also fine internally if there's no budget and you write something real
• Gift only: Your own employees, when the gift already carries a personal message. A second card is then repeating yourself in a more expensive way
• Both: Your largest client relationships, and anyone where the card is doing a specific job the gift can't, like a handwritten note from a named person

The bit people miss is that a digital gift usually arrives with a message attached. A Huggg gift opens with your own line to the recipient before they choose anything, so the card is often the redundant half. Spend the difference on the message instead.

What to write in a corporate Christmas card

The hard part isn't the sign-off. It's writing something that doesn't read like it was generated in bulk or written by ChatGPT... because it was.

Three rules before you open up a Word doc. Name something specific that happened this year, keep it shorter than you think, don't use the card to set up next year's targets.

A Christmas message to employees

This year asked a lot of you, and you kept showing up for each other. Thank you for [specific thing - the move to the new site, covering the summer with half a team, the launch in March]. Have a proper rest over Christmas. We'll see you in January.

Works because it names one real thing and then gets out of the way.

A message to a client

Thank you for a good year of working together. [Specific project or moment] was a highlight for us. Wishing you and the team a restful Christmas and a strong start to 2027.

Resist "we look forward to continuing to add value". It reads as an invoice with tinsel on it.

A message to someone who has had a hard year

Thinking of you this Christmas. It's been a tough one, and you've handled it with more grace than most. Take the time off properly.

Short is the point. Don't reach for silver linings.

What to avoid

• Company news. A Christmas card isn't a newsletter - sorry, not sorry
• "Seasons greetings from all the team at [Company]" with nothing else. That's a signature, not a message
• Anything that implies a conversation in January about renewals
• A printed signature where a real one would have taken four seconds

Business Christmas cards: the actual options

Printed cards. Still the strongest option for clients, because they physically sit on a desk. Order by early November if you want them to arrive before people start finishing for the year. Martha Brook do good personalised stationery if you want something that doesn't look like it came from a catalogue.

E-cards. Cheap, instant, and easy to send to a distributed list. They also get deleted faster than anything else in this guide. Fine for a large supplier list, weak for your top ten accounts.

Charity cards. A reasonable answer to the "is this a waste of money" question, and worth saying which charity and how much on the card itself. Vague charity claims read worse than no claim.

Handwritten notes, no card. Underrated. For a team under about 30 people, a short handwritten line to each person costs an afternoon and lands harder than anything printed.

When the card isn't the thing that's missing

Worth knowing before you spend the budget on stationery.

In the Huggg Christmas Gift Index, a survey of 500 UK working adults fielded in August 2026, 31% said their employer gives them nothing at Christmas. Not a small gift. Nothing. The second most common answer after a party.

And among the people who did get something, more said it felt generic (42%) than felt genuinely valued (34%).

So there are two different problems here, and a card only solves one of them. If your people currently get nothing, a card is a real improvement and costs very little. If your people already get something that lands flat, another card won't fix it.

The pattern underneath both is the same: the gesture works when it's specific to the person, and stops working when it's specific to the calendar.

If you want to think the seasonal side through properly this year rather than in the third week of December, Huggg's Christmas planning guide covers the timings, and how to reach people without collecting addresses covers the bit that usually derails distributed teams.

FAQs

When should you send corporate Christmas cards?

Post printed cards in the last week of November or the first week of December. Many businesses wind down from mid-December and a card arriving to an empty office has done nothing. For e-cards, the first or second week of December is fine.

Are corporate Christmas cards tax deductible in the UK?

Christmas cards sent to clients are generally treated as a business expense rather than a gift, so the £50 business gift limit and its restrictions on food, drink and tobacco don't apply in the same way. The rules on client gifting are narrower than most people assume - we cover them in Christmas gifts for clients. Check anything specific with your accountant.

What do you write in a company Christmas card to staff?

Name one specific thing the team did this year, thank them for it plainly, and tell them to rest. Avoid company news, targets, and anything that reads like it was written for everyone at once, because that's exactly what people will hear.

Should we send a card and a gift?

Only if the card is doing a job the gift can't, such as carrying a handwritten note from a named person. Most digital gifts, Huggg included, already arrive with a personal message from the sender, so a second generic card adds cost without adding meaning.

Huggg is a UK gifting platform used by over 2,000 businesses to send gifts your people choose themselves, with no sign-up for recipients and P11D-ready reporting. Our festive range opens on 3 November.

If you're planning Christmas now, talk to us about doing it differently this year.