Christmas wishes for a friend

Six messages you could actually send

Continue writing opens that message in the card with the words already in it, so all that is left is to change a word and send it. The last message is the longest of the six, and it is the only one you have to copy across yourself.

1. Merry Christmas. Wishing you a slow morning, very good coffee, and nothing at all on the calendar until evening. Thank you for the year, especially the parts of it that weren't easy. Hope the one ahead goes gently with you.

   Continue writing with message 1

2. Merry Christmas from too far away. Consider this the warmest hug available online until I can deliver the real one. Hope somebody else does all the cooking for once and you get to sit still for an entire day without being asked for anything.

   Continue writing with message 2

3. Merry Christmas. Hoping the year ahead is a good deal gentler than this one managed to be, because you were owed better than what it handed you. Have a warm, well-fed, badly organised day. Let's meet properly before next December.

   Continue writing with message 3

4. Merry Christmas. I've eaten cake for breakfast, the same four songs are on repeat at a volume nobody agreed to, and it isn't yet noon. Hope your day is equally badly managed, and considerably happier than mine is loud.

   Continue writing with message 4

5. Merry Christmas. The best one I've had is still the year we gave up on plans entirely and ate biryani in front of the tree, which nobody has let us forget since. Thinking of you today. Same songs, same lights, same person missing.

   Continue writing with message 5

6. Merry Christmas. This isn't the year we manage to be in the same room, which I'm annoyed about, so take this as the warmest hug the internet can carry instead. Hope somebody else does all the cooking, nobody asks you to organise anything, and the year ahead goes far easier on you than this one did.

   Copy

Writing your own

Wish for rest, specifically. Christmas messages default to joy and peace, which is what the printed card says. A slow morning with nothing on the calendar is a wish somebody can actually picture and actually want.

Mention the distance if there is any. Christmas is the festival most about being in the same room, so from too far away is not a complaint, it is the honest frame — and it makes the card the closest thing available to being there.