57 Easter Wishes for the Right Sunday

First, check which Easter you are writing for

Easter moves because it is set by the moon, not the calendar: the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after March 21, a rule settled in the year 325 that leaves a five-week spread of possible dates. In 2027 it lands early, on March 28, six days after the earliest date it can ever take. Good Friday is March 26. If the card is going in the post inside the US, mail it by Monday, March 22 and it should be there for the weekend. If March has already ambushed you, an easter ecard sent on the Saturday still counts as on time, because it arrives before the Sunday it is for.

The second date is the one card shops forget. Greek, Russian, Ukrainian and other Orthodox churches reckon Easter by an older calendar, and in 2027 their Pascha falls on Sunday, May 2, five full weeks after the Western one. A March card to an Orthodox household is not early and thoughtful. It is a spring card, and it will be read as one. If you are not sure which Easter a friend keeps, ask, or send the spring card in March and the real card in May. Passover, for reference, begins on the evening of April 21 in 2027, a separate weekend from both Easters, so check which holiday your friend is actually keeping before you pick the card. UK grandmothers sort themselves out earlier: Mothering Sunday is March 7, and the what to write in a Mother's Day card guidance covers that one.

If your list is long, sort it in February into two piles, March and May, and write the May pile in April, when the shops have restocked the cards and you are not competing with the March rush. The March pile is the urgent one. An early Easter catches out everyone who thinks of Easter as an April holiday, and by the time they remember, the decent cards are gone and the post is slow.

Four lines that reliably land wrong, all of them sent with love:

"He is risen! I hope it brings you comfort this year."

"Some bunny is thinking of you! Hope the chocolate cheers you up."

"Happy Easter! Enjoy ALL the chocolate, you have earned it."

"Happy Easter!! See you at lunch on Sunday." (posted March 26, to a family whose Easter is May 2)

A resurrection greeting offered as comfort to a friend who does not believe it, and who buried her husband in February. A pun card for a house in mourning. A chocolate joke for a man who gave chocolate up for Lent and has eleven days to go. None of these writers meant anything but kindness. The card just never asked who it was for.

Warm and simple, for most of the list

For most of the list, "Happy Easter" plus one anchored detail does the whole job. The anchor is the part that could not be moved to another card: the lamb that is always late, the table that always fits two more, the dessert from last year that nobody has stopped talking about. Adjectives wash off. Anchors stay.

• Happy Easter. I hope the lamb is on time this year and somebody else washes up.
• Wishing you a slow Sunday, a long lunch, and a seat in the sun afterwards.
• Happy Easter to the house that always has room for two more at the table.
• Thinking of you this Easter. First spring in the new place. May the garden forgive you for last year.
• Happy Easter. May your eggs be findable, your chocolate be the good kind, and your Monday be a holiday.
• Sending you Easter love from our table to yours. Save us the argument about who makes the gravy.
• Happy Easter. I keep thinking about last year's dessert, and I am not too proud to say so.
• May this Easter be gentle with you: good people, full plates, and nothing scheduled before noon.

Religious wishes, for people who share the faith

The oldest Easter greeting is an exchange, not a slogan: one person says "He is risen," and the other answers, "He is risen indeed." If you and the reader both say it, the card underneath can be plain and still carry real weight. If you quote a verse, give the reference and a line of your own; a card that is only a verse is a tract with your name on it.

• He is risen. Happy Easter to you and to everyone at your table.
• He is risen indeed. Praying your Easter holds as much hope as the morning promises.
• Happy Easter. "He is not here; he has risen, just as he said." Matthew 28:6 has carried a lot of Easters in this family, and it can carry this one.
• Wishing you a blessed Easter. May the hope of it sit with you long after the daffodils are done.
• Happy Easter. Grateful for a Savior who makes new beginnings more than a figure of speech.
• May your Easter start in church and end around a table full of people you love. A blessed Easter to you all.
• Thinking of you at Easter and thanking God for you. Specifically you, not people in general.
• Happy Easter. May your faith feel less like a duty this spring and more like a gift again.

For Orthodox friends and family, it is Pascha

In 2024 I sent a card to my friend Despina in Cleveland, timed to arrive for Easter Sunday, March 31, with four careful sentences about spring and lamb. Despina's family is Greek Orthodox. Their Easter, Pascha, was May 5 that year. The card sat on her fridge for five weeks, through my entire Easter season, waiting for hers to begin, and she rang me on the fifth of May, with the lamb already in the oven, to tell me it had finally arrived. I keep two Easters in my calendar now. The May one just says Despina.

The greeting to use is "Christos Anesti" (Christ is risen), answered "Alithos Anesti" (truly, He is risen). The eggs are dyed red rather than pastel, and cracking them against each other at the table is a game with a winner, not a decoration. You do not need to be Orthodox, or Greek, to use the greeting; it is offered to guests the way happy Easter is, and answering it in English is perfectly fine. In 2027, send these cards for the first days of May.

• Christos Anesti! Wishing you and your family a blessed Pascha and a table that stays full all afternoon.
• Happy Pascha. May your egg be the last one uncracked this year.
• Thinking of you as your Holy Week begins. May it be a gentle one, and may May 2 find you rested and fed.
• Pascha blessings to the whole family. My card is on the right Sunday this year, which took me long enough to learn.
• Christos Anesti. Alithos Anesti. Some greetings need nothing added, so I will only add this: we love you, and dinner at ours is overdue.
• Happy Easter, on your date this time. After last year's effort, early May is circled in this house in red pen.

Funny ones, and none of them are egg puns

The standard Easter pun stock (eggs-tra, some bunny, hoppy, Peeps) has now been printed on so many cards that the recipient can see the joke arriving from the envelope. The humor that survives is aimed at the calendar, the weather and the writer. In 2027, Easter arrives on March 28, which across half the country is winter wearing a spring costume, and that is funnier than any bunny.

• Happy Easter. The egg hunt is outdoors again this year, so it now qualifies as a winter sport.
• Easter in March means the chocolate eggs and the snow shovel come out in the same week. Balance.
• I gave up chocolate for Lent and would like it formally noted that I lasted eleven days.
• Happy Easter to the only person I know who treats the egg hunt as a ranked competition. The trophy is imaginary. You still want it.
• May your Easter be full of family, food, and nobody explaining the full-moon calculation at the table.
• Wishing you an Easter where the kids find every egg, including the one still missing from last year behind the sofa.
• Happy Easter. There is money hidden in exactly none of the eggs at my house, before the rumor starts.

For kids, and for the one who has stopped believing

Write to the child, not about them: their name, their hunting record, the candy they actually trade for. Skip the verse card inside a bunny envelope. Kids can tell when the card was bought for the adult. And for the twelve-year-old who has quietly worked out the bunny's logistics, do not pretend otherwise. A wink respects the detective work. For a child who will be away over Easter, the card does the visiting, so keep it bright and put the score they have to beat in writing.

• Happy Easter! Your record from last year (fourteen eggs, one never found) stands until Sunday. Defend it.
• Happy Easter. The bunny has been notified about the jellybean situation. Top priority.
• To the champion of the garden hunt: may your basket be heavy and your little cousin be slow off the mark.
• Happy Easter! Chocolate for breakfast is officially allowed today. I checked with nobody. It is allowed.
• Happy Easter. I hear the bunny still has your address. That is all I am authorized to say on the matter.
• You are too old for the bunny and too young to be trusted hiding the eggs, which makes you the referee. Happy Easter. Fair calls only.
• Happy Easter to my favorite hunting partner. Next year you hide them, and I will pretend the easy ones are hard.

Coworkers, clients and the person who signs after you

At work, treat Easter as a seasonal card rather than a sermon. You do not know who at the table keeps the feast, who is halfway through a fast, and who is only here for the long weekend, and a verse that is warm in a church hall can feel like a memo in an office. Wishes about rest, spring and a short week are true for everyone who reads them.

• Happy Easter. Wishing you a proper break and a Monday that behaves itself.
• Happy Easter to the whole team. Thank you for a first quarter that asked a lot of everyone. Enjoy the weekend.
• Wishing you a restful Easter weekend and an inbox with the decency to wait until Tuesday.
• Happy Easter. Grateful to work with you. Hope the weekend is long and the weather holds.
• Spring greetings from all of us. Thank you for your business this year, and a happy Easter if you are celebrating.
• Happy Easter. May your out-of-office be respected by humans and software alike.
• To our clients and partners: thank you, happy Easter, and we will see you after the break, rested or at least fed.

The first Easter after a hard year

Easter is the hardest holiday card to write to a house in mourning, because the day's whole message is that death is not the end, and that sentence is a comfort or a slap depending on who is reading it. The rules that hold: name the person who is missing. Do not use the resurrection as an argument. Say, in the card, that there is nothing to write back. And think about timing. Everyone writes for Sunday. A card that arrives on the quiet Saturday before it is read alone, slowly, which is how these cards deserve to be read.

• Thinking of you this Easter, and of your dad. I still hear his laugh at that table, and I wanted you to know he is remembered by people who did not have to remember him.
• This is the first Easter without Margaret, and I did not want it to pass without her name being said in this house too. We are thinking of you all.
• No need to write back, today or ever. I just wanted you to know that you, and he, are in our thoughts this weekend.
• There is a seat for you at our table on Sunday if company would help, and complete understanding if it would not.
• I am not going to tell you what Easter means this year. I am just going to say that I miss her too, and that I will still be saying it in May and June.
• You are in our prayers this Easter, in the plain sense: your names are said in our house, by name, and often.

And write again next year. The second Easter after a death gets almost no cards at all, and the people in that house notice the quiet more than they noticed the first year's pile.

Short lines for group cards and texts

A group card gives you one line, sometimes a vertical half-line wedged between two people who both wrote "Happy Easter!!" in larger handwriting. Read what is above yours before you write. If the card already holds three bare greetings, yours is the line that adds a fact, a date or a small joke, and it will be the one that gets read twice.

• Happy Easter. March 28 this year. This card is as surprised as you are.
• Happy Easter from the desk by the window. Spring is coming. Allegedly.
• Happy Pascha for May 2. Some of us read the calendar properly.
• Happy Easter. I call first rights on any leftover chocolate in the break room.
• He is risen. A happy Easter to everyone signing, and everyone reading over shoulders.
• Happy Easter. May your hunt be short and your lunch be long.
• Thinking of everyone this Easter. Back Tuesday, fed and slower.
• Happy Easter! The spring playlist in the office kitchen is my doing, and I apologize for none of it.

Turn it into a group card

Easter in a lot of families is now a two-date holiday: grandparents keeping the March Sunday, cousins keeping Pascha in May, children keeping only the egg hunt, and half the family watching on a screen. One person cannot hold all of that in their head, and should not have to. A group card everyone signs in their own words lets each person write to the Sunday they actually celebrate, and you can create a card online in a few minutes and send the link round instead of chasing signatures across three time zones. Set the signing deadline for the earlier date and let the May contingent add their lines when their Easter arrives; a group card is one of the few cards that improves by landing twice. For relatives who will mostly be present as faces on a laptop, the virtual celebrations guide covers the gathering itself, and the broader holiday card messages bank is the place to check wording for the rest of the year's dates, which ambush people in much the way March 28 is about to.

Despina mails me two red eggs every May, nested in shredded paper inside a box that once held Turkish delight. One always arrives cracked, along the same curve, as if it had met the same corner of the same sorting office. I crack the good one against the fridge door, alone, which is not how the game is meant to work, and eat it standing up, with salt. The cracked one I eat second, out of fairness to it.