What to Write in a Lunar New Year Card When the Greeting Isn't Yours

The name and the greeting are decisions, not decorations

Start with the name of the holiday, because the card says it before anything else. Lunar New Year is the umbrella: it covers the Chinese Spring Festival, Tet in Vietnam and Seollal in Korea, and it never lands wrong. Chinese New Year is right for many Chinese families and is what plenty of them call it themselves. It is the wrong name for a Korean colleague's family, who celebrate Seollal, and an odd one for a Vietnamese family at Tet.

Then the greeting, and here the phrasebook pages mislead by listing translations side by side as if they were interchangeable. Xin Nian Kuai Le is Mandarin for happy new year. Gong Xi Fa Cai is also Mandarin, and it is not a hello: it is a prosperity blessing, closer to may you prosper: exactly right inside the family, a strange headline for a neighbour. Gung Hay Fat Choy is the Cantonese version of that blessing. Chuc Mung Nam Moi is Vietnamese, for Tet. Saehae bok mani badeuseyo is Korean, for Seollal, and wishes the person much good fortune. Pick the wrong one, and a Vietnamese greeting on a card to a Chinese family announces that you guessed.

So copy, do not compose. If anyone in the family has ever sent you a card, a message or an email about the holiday, their greeting is the one to send back, spelled their way. Read it aloud once before it goes in a card you will hand over in person. And if you have nothing to copy from, plain English is never the failure. Happy Lunar New Year, plus one true sentence about the person, beats a borrowed blessing with the tones filed off.

The third decision is the animal, and it changes under you. 2027 is the Year of the Goat, from Saturday 6 February. It is also translated as the Ram, and as the Sheep: same animal, three English words. Match the word the family uses. What matters more is what the animal is not. Last year was the Horse, and last year's lines, full of galloping and speed, are wrong now, still printed all over the internet by people who did not update the page. A baby born in January 2027 is a Horse too, because the year turns on 6 February and not on 1 January.

Here is the shape of a card that gets all of it wrong at once, and the fix:

Happy Chinese New Year, Mr. Tran! Gong xi fa cai, and may the Year of the Horse bring you the wealth you deserve. Hope this is the year your luck finally turns.

Mr. Tran's family is Vietnamese, so the holiday is Tet and the headline greeting is Mandarin. The Horse is last year's animal. And luck finally turning tells a man his years so far have been unlucky, not a sentence to send anyone in a season built on the opposite idea. The same card, written straight:

Happy Tet, Mr. Tran. Chuc mung nam moi. Wishing you good health, and many more of your spring rolls at the street party. Thank you for the ones you sent over last February; the plate came back empty the same night.

Health first, the right name, the right greeting, and one specific thing that actually happened. That is the whole method, and every bank below is built on it.

Ink, paper and timing: the parts nobody puts on the card

Red is the colour of the festival: the envelope, the couplets on the door, the lanterns. It is also the one colour to keep off a person's name. In the old ancestral records the names of the dead were written in red, and so were the names of condemned criminals, in chicken blood before it was ink. Red is still the colour teachers and accountants correct in. A living person's name in red reads, to anyone who grew up with it, as an ending or as an error. Decorate in red all you like. Write their name in black.

I learned this from the wrong end. In 2023 I wrote a card to a friend's father, Mr. Chen, whose family lives in Richmond, and I wrote his name across the top in the red gel pen from our kitchen drawer, because it was the pen that worked. His daughter Mei told me about it two days later, stirring a pot in her own kitchen, in the tone of someone passing on weather. He had not been angry. He had propped the card against the tangerines, face to the wall, and said names in red are for the dead and for homework. The card I sent the next year was black ink, and it stood on the mantelpiece, face out. That is the entire difference the colour of a name makes.

Timing is kinder here than at Christmas. The festival runs fifteen days, from 6 February to the Lantern Festival on 20 February, and a card that arrives inside that window is on time, not late. Family cards should land before the day or on it. A colleague's card can arrive in the first week back. If yours lands on day nine, write it as a festival card, not a late one. Nobody at a lantern display has ever marked a card down for arriving while the lanterns were up.

Keep five words out of the card entirely: death, sickness, broken, loss and debt. The season treats words as instructions, and a wish built out of the things you hope they avoid still names them. Every one of those lines has a positive twin. Not no more illness, but good health. Not a year with nothing broken, but a house that holds together and people who mend things. Write the twin.

Three lines that fail those rules:

Wishing you a year with no sickness, no loss and nothing broken.

May your debts be behind you by summer, and your luck turned at last.

Happy Year of the Horse: run at everything, all year.

For elders and family

For grandparents, parents, aunties and uncles, the order of the wishes is the message. Health comes first, before prosperity, before success, before anything about you. A card to an elder that leads with money reads as if the money were the point of them. Lead with health, add one specific thing (the soup, the garden, the morning walks), and let prosperity come third.

• Happy Lunar New Year, Grandma. Wishing you good health, and a year of mornings in the garden before the heat. The turnip cake at New Year is still the one I measure the others against.
• Xin nian kuai le, Uncle. Good health to you, and strength in your knees for the market stairs. Thank you for the oranges you sent at New Year; they were gone in two days, which is the review they deserved.
• Happy Lunar New Year to you both. Health for the year, rest when you want it, and a house full at the reunion dinner. I will call on the second day, when the phone is quieter.
• Wishing you a gentle Goat year, Auntie: good health, good sleep, and dumplings made by other people's hands for once. You have folded enough for three families.
• Happy New Year, Dad. Good health, and a year of the fishing trips you keep postponing. Everything else on this card is in the order you taught me: health, family, then the rest.
• Gong xi fa cai, Grandpa, and health above it. May your mahjong table be kind and your tea never go cold waiting for a fourth player.
• Happy Lunar New Year, Mum. Wishing you health, and a year where the phone rings with good news in the ordinary weeks. The niangao you sent is in the freezer, saved for the Lantern Festival, as instructed.
• To everyone at the reunion table: health for the elders, patience for the cooks, and a year that keeps everyone within a short flight. Someone save me a seat next year.
• Happy Lunar New Year. Wishing you good health and a well-fed year, and thanking you for every red envelope I was too young to thank you for. I understand the system better now.

For friends

Friends get the zodiac, the food and the jokes. This is the bank where a funny line is welcome, as long as it aims at the calendar, the cooking or yourself. It never aims at their luck, their age or their marital status, which at New Year are all load-bearing.

• Happy Lunar New Year. Year of the Goat, which the almanac says favours patience, good taste and finishing things. One of those is yours already. I will let you pick.
• Xin nian kuai le. Wishing you a year of full tables and short queues, and one plate of dumplings you did not have to fold yourself.
• Happy Tet. Chuc mung nam moi. May your year be as well organised as your mother's freezer, which I think about more than I should.
• Happy Seollal. Saehae bok mani badeuseyo. Wishing you health, a calm year at work, and tteokguk made by somebody else's grandmother.
• Happy Lunar New Year to my favourite Horse, entering a Goat year at a sensible pace. May the year meet you halfway and the noodles be long.
• Gung hay fat choy. Wishing you prosperity of the specific kind: the landlord fixing the boiler without being asked, and your name coming up in rooms that matter.
• Happy New Year. I am wishing you the fish course: more than enough, with some left over on purpose. Save me the seat near the kitchen again.
• Happy Lunar New Year. Same time next year I want us comparing notes on a year that treated us both gently. Bring the oranges. I will bring a card written in the correct ink.

When it is their zodiac year

Some of the people on your list are Goats this year, born in 1955, 1967, 1979, 1991, 2003 or 2015, and 2027 is their ben ming nian, their zodiac year come round again. Tradition does not treat that as a victory lap. It treats it as a year to step carefully, the way you cross a yard you know has ice on it, and the household answer is something red, worn through the year and usually given by somebody who loves them. So write steady lines. No your year to shine, nothing about luck turning, and if you give a gift, make it red and wearable.

• Happy Lunar New Year. Your year, in the careful sense. Wishing you a steady one: health, unhurried mornings, and people paying attention. The red socks in this envelope are from me, which is how it is supposed to work.
• Happy New Year to a Goat in a Goat year. Nothing flashy wished for here, just a smooth road, a warm house and a year that asks little of you. You have carried enough years at speed.
• Xin nian kuai le. For your ben ming nian I am wishing you the boring blessings, in the best sense: sleep, appetite, a boiler that behaves. The drama can have the year off.
• Happy Lunar New Year. A red thread for your wrist, from our house to yours, and a wish for a year that goes gently past. Wear it as long as it lasts, that is the whole arrangement.
• Happy New Year. I know this year asks for care, so the card is mostly this: health, and us nearby. The celebrating can be as quiet as you want it.
• Happy Lunar New Year to the family's Goat. Wishing you a year of being looked after as well as you have looked after everybody else. Starting with dinner: you are not cooking at New Year. That part is settled.

For coworkers and the office card

At work the register drops to warm and plain, and that is a strength, not a compromise. You are not wishing a colleague prosperity in the family sense. You are marking that their new year was noticed, by name, on time. The card that fails at work is the one sent to a list: the same line to the colleague whose family celebrates Tet, the one whose family celebrates Seollal, and the one included for safety who celebrates neither. Write each one separately. It takes ten minutes and it is the whole gesture.

• Happy Lunar New Year. Wishing you good health and a smooth year, and thanking you for the handover notes that saved my January. Hope the festival days are properly off.
• Happy Seollal. Wishing you a restful holiday and a calm start to the year. The team held together fine while you were away, which is mostly your doing.
• Happy Tet. Chuc mung nam moi. Wishing you health, and a year of projects that end on time. Thank you for the spring rolls in the break room; they raised the standard of the whole floor.
• Happy Lunar New Year to the team. Good health to you and your families, and a year of meetings that could not have been emails. The card, and the sentiment, are from all of us.
• Happy New Year. Wishing you a good break over the festival and a gentle week back. Your desk plant survived my watering rota, which I count as the year's first success.
• Happy Lunar New Year. Thank you for everything you carried in the run-up to the holiday, including the rest of us. Health and rest to you, in that order.
• For the new year, prosperity in the office sense: a full calendar of the good meetings and none of the other kind. See you after the Lantern Festival.

For clients and business contacts

Business is where Western card instincts point the wrong way. In a British or American office card, wishing a client money can read as grasping. In a Lunar New Year card, prosperity is the formal register: the polite, expected content of the card, and leaving it out to be tasteful leaves the card empty. What changes is the temperature. Family warmth becomes respect, the specific sentence becomes a thank-you for something that actually happened in the year's business, and the card goes before the holiday, because their office will close.

• Happy Lunar New Year. Wishing you and your team health and a prosperous year. Thank you for the order in November, and for paying early when the schedule slipped. It was noticed.
• Gong xi fa cai. With thanks for a good year of working together: best wishes for the year of the Goat, steady growth, and customers who pay on the first invoice.
• Happy Lunar New Year to everyone at [company]. Wishing the business a strong year and all of you good health. We look forward to the work ahead, after the holiday is properly taken.
• Xin nian kuai le. Wishing you prosperity, and thanking you for the introduction you made in September, which turned into our best client of the year. Favours of that size are remembered in this office.
• Wishing your family business health first and a full order book second this Lunar New Year, and thanking your father for the tea and the long way round the warehouse in October. I learned more that afternoon than in the meeting.
• Best wishes for a prosperous Lunar New Year, and a quiet one for your accounts team at the month ends. We will keep our paperwork as tidy as we know how to.

From outside the tradition

Neighbours, teachers, the parents of your child's best friend, the family your son or daughter has married into: senders who do not celebrate the holiday themselves. The failure mode here is performing. Borrowed ceremony from someone who learned it that morning reads as costume. The lines that work are honest about the distance and specific about the household: a neighbour who noticed, not a celebrant who forgot nothing. One greeting in their words, copied carefully, is welcome. Three is a recital.

• Happy Lunar New Year to our neighbours, from the house at number 14 with the loud gate. Wishing your family good health this year, and thanking you for the oranges left at the door last February. They were the best of the winter.
• Happy Tet. We do not celebrate it in our house, but we do celebrate having you on the street. Wishing you health, and many people at your table.
• Happy Lunar New Year, Mrs. Park. Thank you for teaching our daughter this year, including the evening she came home and corrected our pronunciation at dinner. Wishing you health and a restful holiday.
• Happy Seollal to the family. We are the beginners at this table, and grateful to be at it. Wishing you good health, and thanking you for the seat, the soup and the patience with our questions.
• Happy Lunar New Year. Your card last year taught this house when the festival was, which is why this one is on time. Wishing you health, and a year of good news at ordinary volume.
• Happy New Year to our friends across the landing. Wishing you health and a full house at New Year. If the dumpling production line needs an extra pair of hands that folds slowly and eats wages, ours are available.

Cards that travel with a red envelope

Some cards do not travel alone. If you are family, or near enough that the family has folded you in, your card may go with a red envelope, which has rules the card shop does not print. Envelopes flow downhill and, later, back up: married adults give to children and to the young and unmarried, and grown children give to their parents and grandparents. The money is new notes, never coins, in an even amount, with no four in it, because four sounds like death. Eights are welcome, because eight sounds like prosperity. Give and take with both hands. Never open one in front of the giver, and never write your name on the envelope itself. If you are not sure you are inside the envelope circle for a family, you are not. Send the card alone; it is a complete gift.

• Happy Lunar New Year, Grandma. Health first, as always. The envelope is from both of us, with love, and instructions to spend it on something with no use at all.
• Happy Lunar New Year. A red envelope for the bravest reader in the second grade. May your year be full of stories you are allowed to stay up for.
• Xin nian kuai le, Dad. The envelope is the small half of this card. The large half is thank you, for the roof years and the school years. Health to you.
• For the newest member of the family: an envelope, a Lunar New Year card she will read in about six years. Health and appetite to her, and sleep to her parents, in whatever order it comes.
• Happy New Year, Auntie. An envelope with both hands, and a wish for your health. The oranges are coming separately, by hand, because posting fruit is where I draw the line.

Turn it into a group card

An office, a class or a street wants one card, and the group version solves two problems at once: nobody has to perform a greeting alone, and the specific sentences pile up into something a family keeps. A group card everyone signs online lets each person add a line in their own words, which is how the break-room thank-you and the careful health wish end up on the same card. You can create a card online and set the deadline before the office closes for the holiday.

For the family version of the same problem, the Lunar New Year wishes bank has lines sorted by tone, if your group wants a written one to argue from. When the next date on the office calendar belongs to a parent rather than a festival, the Mother's Day card guide works the same way: greeting as a decision first, then the banks. And the group greeting cards and work culture piece covers why one signed card beats the one that circulates an office collecting dust.

The red gel pen is still in our kitchen drawer, demoted. It labels freezer bags now, and it writes on tape in the cold when the black pens give up, which they do every January. Last August it wrote BROAD BEANS on a bag in inch-high letters. Nobody has ever apologised to the pen, and it has never once mentioned Mr. Chen.