What to Write in a Diwali Card When the Festival Lasts Five Days

First, work out which of the five days this card is for

A Diwali card is not one card. The festival runs five days, and families do different things on different days, so a card that lands on the right day can say the day's thing instead of the festival's general thing. In US and UK calendars this year, Dhanteras is Friday 6 November, the day for buying something new and metal for the house and for lighting the first lamp. Choti Diwali, the small Diwali, is Saturday 7 November. The main night, Lakshmi Puja, is Sunday 8 November, when the rows of diyas come out and the card you most mean should already have arrived. Monday 9 November is Govardhan Puja, which for Gujarati and Marwari families is also Bestu Varas, the first day of their new year. Tuesday 10 November is Bhai Dooj, the siblings' day, when sisters put a tilak on their brothers and get gifts in return. Some families' calendars shift the last two days by one; the family you are writing to keeps its own calendar, and theirs wins.

So the timing rules are plain. A posted card should land by Dhanteras, Friday, which means it leaves you the weekend before. A text or an e-card can land on the main evening itself and lose nothing. Because the main day is a Sunday this year, an office card has two good landings, Friday 6th before people leave, or Monday 9th when they are back. And the window does not slam shut on Sunday night: a card that arrives on Bhai Dooj is still inside the festival, which is more than can be said for most holidays. If you want the large bank of wishes sorted by tone rather than timing, the Diwali wishes collection has them; what follows is the method for choosing and writing your own.

Pick the greeting before you pick the line

Three greetings do nearly all the work. Happy Diwali is never wrong, from anyone, to anyone, and if you are unsure it is the one to use. Shubh Deepavali is the fuller, more formal form, the one for elders, for a card that comes with a gift, and for anyone who greets you that way first. Deepavali is simply the word itself, the Sanskrit name meaning a row of lights, and it is the version many South Indian families use at home. The rule that covers all three: copy the word they use. It is on last year's card, in their message to you, in the shop window of the sweet shop they queue at. Matching it takes ten seconds and reads like attention, which it is.

One more decision, and it is the one most cards get wrong. For Gujarati, Marwari and many Jain families, Diwali is the new year, and a card that ignores that has missed half the occasion; their new year greeting is Saal Mubarak, and it belongs on the card that lands on the Monday. For most other families the new year falls in spring, and a big headline happy new year at Diwali lands as a confident mistake. If you know, write it. If you do not know, let the new year ride second, one line under the Diwali greeting, where it is a bonus if it is right and barely a claim if it is not.

Here is the overshoot this prevents. A first draft, written with love and a search engine:

"May Goddess Lakshmi shower your business with wealth and may Lord Rama's victory over darkness inspire your whole team to greatness this year."

Borrowed gods, a prosperity promise no card can keep, and nothing in it that could only be said to this person. The same card, cut down to a greeting and one true thing:

"Shubh Deepavali. Thank you for the patience on the September job; it was noticed at this end too. Health and a good year to your family."

And four lines that should stay in the shop:

"Happy Diwali, the Indian Christmas!"
"Hope the fireworks are huge and the neighbours' dog survives."
"As you know, Diwali marks the return of Lord Rama after fourteen years in exile..."
"Enjoy your time off, you must be glad of the break."

The first flattens their festival into yours. The second jokes about the one part of the night many families now skip, for the air, the animals, or the neighbours. The third explains their own festival to them, at length, in their card. The fourth assumes a holiday they may be working straight through.

For family

Family cards carry the festival's real weight, so they can carry detail: the food, the house, who is missing, who is new. Elders get the fuller greeting and the health wish first, before prosperity, because that is the order they would put it in themselves.

• Happy Diwali, Maa. The house smells of ghee before I get through the door. Save me the corner piece of whatever is frying.
• Shubh Deepavali. Another year of you lighting the first diya and pretending you are not checking whether the rest of us lit ours straight.
• Happy Diwali to the people who taught me a festival is mostly cooking for two days and eating for five.
• Wishing this house health first and everything else after. The rest is decoration.
• Happy Diwali, Bhai. I owe you a tilak, a decent gift and an apology for last year's effort. Two of the three are in this card.
• May the year be kind to this family in the ways we actually need: good knees, invoices paid, no trouble with the boiler in January.
• Shubh Deepavali, Dadi. The money in your card is already spent in my head on books, which I think makes it yours twice over.
• Happy Diwali. First one with the baby grabbing at the diya tray from a safe distance. Photograph everything.

For friends

Friends get the version with a memory in it. If your line could go to any friend you have, it is not finished; put the rangoli, the sweets debt, or the specific evening in it and it becomes theirs.

• Happy Diwali. Your rangoli took four hours and the wind took four minutes. It was still the best one on the street.
• Shubh Deepavali to my favourite person to split a box of kaju katli with, and then deny it to everyone else.
• Happy Diwali. Come over after your family puja. There will be leftovers, a deck of cards, and no agenda beyond that.
• Wishing you a year with fewer 2 a.m. work calls and more evenings that end the way tonight does.
• Happy Diwali. Two time zones apart this year, so I am lighting mine when your evening starts. For one hour we are doing the same thing.
• Happy Diwali. May your mithai be fresh, your relatives brief, and your family group chat quiet by ten.
• To the friend who deep-cleans like the house is being inspected: it is ready. Sit down now.
• Happy Diwali. New city, new job, same person I would pick first for my team. Light something and send proof.

For coworkers, and the office card

The office card has one trap the family card does not: you may not actually know who celebrates. The honest fix is the inclusive line, addressed to everyone celebrating, which wishes nobody the wrong festival and singles nobody out. For the coworker you know well, drop the inclusivity and write to them. The group card research on this site makes the same point about workplace cards generally: specific beats warm, and a card everyone signs beats a speech from one person.

• Happy Diwali to you and your family. Enjoy the festival properly; the inbox can hold until Monday.
• Wishing you a bright Diwali and a calm run to the end of the year. Thanks for carrying the October release with me.
• Happy Diwali. May your week contain exactly one urgent email, and may it not be from me.
• Happy Diwali to everyone celebrating. The good sweets are in the kitchen, and the meeting that could have been an email has been cancelled for the season.
• Wishing everyone celebrating health, light and a good year ahead, from the whole design team.
• Happy Diwali. Thank you for the mithai guide last year. I no longer fear the box.
• Shubh Deepavali. Hope the five days give you the break the last quarter did not.

For clients and business contacts

Business cards run cooler and shorter. Gratitude for the year's work, one wish, your name, and stop. The one place a business card should warm up is the new year: for Gujarati and Jain business families the Monday after Diwali opens their year, and a card that knows it is remembered long after the hampers are eaten.

• Happy Diwali to you and your family, and thank you for the work we have done together this year. We do not take it for granted.
• Wishing you a prosperous Diwali and a strong start to the new year, from all of us at the studio. It has been a good year to be in business with you.
• Shubh Deepavali. It has been a good year of working with you. May the next one be better in the ways that count.
• Happy Diwali. We close early on Friday so the team can get home for Dhanteras. Thank you for understanding, and for everything this year.
• Warm Diwali wishes to your team, and thanks for your patience on the September project. It was noticed at this end too.
• Nutan Varshabhinandan, and Saal Mubarak to you and your family. May the new year's books open kindly.

If Diwali is not your festival

If Diwali is not your festival, your card has one job: to be glad, accurately, about somebody else's. You do not need the theology and you should not perform it. These lines say what you actually know, which is the person, the street, the sweets, and that you remembered.

• Happy Diwali. I do not know the rituals, but I know you, and I hope the five days are everything your family has planned.
• Happy Diwali to you all next door. The lights went up on Tuesday and the whole close looks better for it.
• Wishing you and your family a wonderful Diwali. Thank you for the sweets last year; the orange one is still talked about in this house.
• Happy Diwali. If this card gets anything wrong, it is enthusiasm ahead of accuracy. Have a brilliant festival.
• Happy Diwali. I have learned this year that the festival runs five days, so this card is early for four of them and on time for one.
• Thinking of you at Diwali. Whatever the week holds at your house, I hope there is one quiet hour in it with your feet up.
• Happy Diwali. Please tell us what we are eating this year too. Last year we guessed, and we were wrong about everything.

The note that goes out with the sweets

A box of mithai or dry fruits changes what the card is. The box is the message; the note is a label with feelings. In 2023 our office sent hampers to clients, and I wrote the card for Rekha, who runs the accounts team at a supplier in Coventry: four sentences of prosperity wording, including a Lakshmi line I had taken off a greetings site because it sounded like the sort of thing one writes. She emailed back the next week, kind and exact: "We're Sikh, so Lakshmi isn't ours, but Diwali very much is. The card is pinned up." Two lessons, both now rules in this house. Check whose festival you are describing before you borrow its gods. And on a box, one line and your name beat four sentences, because a box goes on a pile of boxes and only the tag gets read.

• Happy Diwali. One box, no speech. From Daniel.
• Shubh Deepavali from the Ahmed family. Eat the kaju katli first.
• For your table, with thanks for the year. Happy Diwali.
• Happy Diwali. The dry fruits are for the grown-ups. The rest is a free-for-all.
• A small light for your house. Happy Diwali, from us.
• Happy Diwali. If the box is empty by Friday, we have done our job.

Short lines, and how to sign

For the group card doing the rounds, the gift tag you have already used, or the person whose card real estate you are sharing with eleven relatives, short is not a failure of effort. It is the correct size. Signing follows the same ladder as the greeting: first name only for almost everyone, your family name when the card is from the house, and the full formal version only for elders and business. And if you are signing for a whole team or street, write it as the group, not as a list of names in a margin; the what-to-write pillar for Mother's Day works through the same signing problem for family cards.

• Shubh Deepavali. Health, light, and a quiet house by Tuesday.
• Happy Diwali. New diyas, old people, good year.
• Shubh Deepavali. Yours is the bright house on the street again.
• Happy Diwali. Eat well. Rest after.
• Wishing you five good days and a better year.
• Saal Mubarak, and a happy Diwali to the whole house.
• Happy Diwali, from ours to yours.

Turn it into a group card

Diwali is the festival where the group card earns its keep twice over: the office that wants one card for everyone celebrating without guessing who that is, and the family spread over four time zones whose card has to arrive before Friday, not after the festival. A group ecard with multiple signers solves both. Everyone writes their own line, the person organising it is not chasing signatures across a corridor, and nobody's line gets squeezed into a margin. You can create a card online in a couple of minutes and set the deadline for Thursday, which is the only deadline all festival. If some of your signers will be celebrating on a screen rather than in the room, the virtual celebrations guide covers the mechanics of that version.

The family three doors down put their Diwali lights up in the last week of October this year, the blue-white set that runs along the gutter. Last year the same set was still up in March, long past the festival and the new year and everything else, and I caught myself slowing down for it on the walk back from the station, glad it was still on. Whether the street approves is an open question nobody has raised out loud yet.