What to Write in a Ramadan Card When One Month Holds Three Different Cards

The greeting is a decision, not a stamp

Two greetings do most of the work, and they do not say the same thing. Ramadan Mubarak means a blessed Ramadan. Ramadan Kareem means a generous one. Both are correct, both are used all over the world, and nobody worth writing to will mark you down for either. If you want the safer default, take Mubarak. It is the older greeting, and it is the one nobody argues about. A minority of scholars prefer it for a precise reason: generosity belongs to God, they say, not to a month, so wishing someone a blessed Ramadan is the cleaner sentence. Kareem is warmer and more modern in feel, and it is what half the cards in the shops say. Plain English is also fine. Happy Ramadan is understood everywhere and read as what it is, a friendly wish from someone outside the month.

The rule that beats all of that: copy the greeting they use. If their card to you last year said Ramadan Kareem, yours can say it back. If their family writes Ramzan Mubarak, the South Asian spelling, match it and do not tidy it into your version. A greeting in a card is an opening, not a reply, so you do not need the set answers. It is still worth knowing they exist. If somebody says Ramadan Kareem to your face, the traditional reply is Allahu Akram, meaning God is more generous. Knowing that will save you from the nod-and-smile I did for two years.

My first Ramadan card went to Layla, two doors down from us in Bradford, in 2023. I had one Arabic phrase in my head and it was the wrong one, and under it I wrote out, at length, what I had read about her own month that morning. This is the card, more or less word for word.

Eid Mubarak, Layla! I read that Ramadan is a special time when you fast in the daytime to think about people who are poor, and reflect on everything. I hope it is going well and you are not too hungry. The big breakfast at the end will be amazing.

Three mistakes in five sentences. Eid Mubarak belongs to Eid, the festival at the end of the month, and I had sent it on the first morning of the fast. The middle was homework, an explanation of Ramadan addressed to a woman who has kept it every year of her adult life. And the ending treated thirty days of fasting as a wait for one large meal. Layla was kind about it in person. A month later her Eid card arrived, and under her own greeting she had written: Right greeting. Wrong month.

The card I sent the year after had two lines in it. The first was Ramadan Mubarak. The second was hers to keep: I hear your kettle go through the wall at half past four, and I think of you every morning of it. That is the whole method of this page. Greeting chosen on purpose, then one sentence that could only be for them, then stop. Everything below is those two moves sorted by the week you are writing in.

The first week, when the month is still new

Cards land best in the first days, when the fast is a decision people have just made and the evenings are still an event. First-week lines can look forward. Wish them strength and peace, name the machinery of the month if you know it, suhoor before dawn and iftar at sunset, and skip the sympathy. Nobody in week one wants to be told it sounds awful. They chose it, and the good lines respect the choosing.

• Ramadan Mubarak. May the month be gentle on you, and the evenings long at your table.
• Thinking of you as the first fasts begin. The early mornings are the part I admire most.
• Ramadan Kareem, and may every iftar this month have somebody good across the table from you.
• Wishing you strength for the short nights and peace for the long days. Ramadan Mubarak.
• First week of the month and I am already in awe. Pace yourself. We think of you at sunset.
• May your suhoor be unhurried and your first iftar worth every hour of the wait.
• Ramadan Mubarak to you and the whole household. Your mum's dates from last year are still talked about on our street.
• New moon, same street. Thinking of you at the first suhoor and every one after it.
• Starting the month with you in my thoughts. Ramadan Mubarak, and ring us when an iftar needs extra chairs.

The middle weeks, when it stops being new

By the second and third week the month has become a routine, and routines wear people down in a way a single hard day does not. The school run still happens. Work still starts at nine. What runs out is not faith, it is novelty, and with it everybody else's attention, which moved on after the first weekend. A card that arrives in the middle is worth more than one that arrived on time, precisely because almost nobody sends one. Keep these shorter and quieter. No cheerleading. The person reading it is tired in a way sleep does not fix quickly, and a line that notices the grind will beat a line that pretends the grind is glorious.

• Somewhere in the middle of it now. No speech from me. Just: still thinking of you at sunset.
• The standing offer stands, all month: lifts, errands, the school run. No need to reply to this.
• Week three is the one nobody writes about. Consider it written about. Ramadan Mubarak.
• Hope the routine has got easier, even if the days have not got shorter.
• For the four o'clock wall and everything after it: respect, and a standing invitation to ours on the night you want a break from cooking.
• No card from me at the start of the month, so here is one in the middle, where it is probably more use.
• Hope the back half of the month treats you better than the front half promised to.
• Still Ramadan Mubarak, and still meant. Some of us are only just catching up.

The last ten nights, when the register drops

The last ten nights are the most serious stretch of the month. Somewhere among the odd-numbered ones, the 21st, 23rd, 25th, 27th and 29th, falls Laylat al-Qadr, the Night of Power, and observant Muslims spend these nights in prayer, often most of the night. Schedules bend. Invitations get declined, or accepted and then quietly unaccepted, and none of that needs your comment or your flexibility performed back at them. A card in this stretch should ask for nothing: no reply, no plans, no verdict on the month. Short is not a compromise here. Short is the whole courtesy.

• For the last ten nights: quiet wishes, and no reply needed to this. Not this week, not ever.
• May one of these nights bring you the thing you have been praying for all month.
• I will not keep you. Ramadan Mubarak, and may the Night of Power find you ready for it.
• Thinking of you on the odd nights. Sleep when you can. The card can wait, and so can I.
• Nearly Eid, and I know better than to fill your evenings. Just this: you are thought of.
• May the last stretch of the month be the best of it.
• If you are keeping people in your prayers on these nights, I would be glad to be one of them.

When the card will land at Eid instead

Ramadan runs 29 or 30 days, and nobody knows which until the new moon is sighted at the end of it. In 2027 the first fast is expected on Monday 8 February, with Eid al-Fitr expected on Tuesday 9 March, or Wednesday 10 March if the month runs to thirty days. That uncertainty is a trap for card writers. A card posted in the last week of Ramadan can easily arrive in a different festival, and a Ramadan greeting in an Eid week reads like a Christmas card in January. If there is any chance your card lands late, write it so it survives the crossing: lead with Eid Mubarak, and talk about the fast in the past tense. The Eid wishes page has the full bank for the festival itself; these are the lines for the card that straddles the line.

• Eid Mubarak. A whole month of early mornings, done. Eat first, read the cards later.
• This was written during Ramadan and posted too slowly, so: Eid Mubarak, and well done for every day of it.
• May your Eid be loud, sweet and slept in. You have earned all three.
• Eid Mubarak to the whole house. The fast is behind you and the table is full, which is the right way round.
• Congratulations on the month behind you, and a happy Eid ahead of you. May the year keep some of what Ramadan gave you.
• Eid Mubarak. Thinking of you at the end of it, the way I was at the start.

For someone who is not fasting this year

Plenty of people sit a Ramadan out, and the reasons are nobody's business: pregnancy, a new baby, illness, medication that has to be taken with food, age, travel, a body that simply cannot do it this year. Some of them mind more than they say. The month is happening all around them, in their own kitchen, and they are watching it from a chair. The wrong card wishes them strength for a fast they are not doing, or, worse, asks why not. Write to the month instead of the fast. There is plenty of month left once the fasting is taken out of it: the evenings, the family, the prayers, the table.

• Ramadan Mubarak. However you are spending the month this year, I hope it is kind to you.
• Thinking of you this Ramadan. No instructions attached, and no questions either. The door is open at ours all month.
• The month is yours too. Wishing you rest, good evenings and an easy conscience.
• I know this Ramadan looks different for you. You are in my thoughts through all of it.
• Ramadan Mubarak. May the feeding of other people, which is half the month, find you at the centre of a table soon.
• For the one holding everybody else's Ramadan together this year: it is noticed, and it counts.

At work, where the card goes round the team

Workplace Ramadan cards run into two practical problems. The first is the card itself, bought by one person and initialled by eleven people who each write less than the person before. The group card research on workplace culture makes the same point about every office occasion: a shared card only works when each signer writes an actual line. The second problem is timing. Do not pass the card round over a working lunch, and do not schedule the handing-over for the middle of the afternoon in a room smelling of everybody else's food. For clients and colleagues you barely know, the greeting plus one honest sentence is the whole job. Do not make the one fasting colleague explain the month to the team inside their own card.

• Ramadan Mubarak from all of us on the team. Meetings before noon where we can manage it, and the good biscuits kept back for after sunset.
• Wishing you a peaceful Ramadan. The early finishes on Fridays are yours, no asking needed.
• Ramadan Mubarak. Thank you for everything this quarter. May the month give some of it back.
• From your team: Ramadan Mubarak, and consider the four o'clock calls covered for the duration.
• To a colleague we are lucky to have: a blessed month, unhurried evenings, and no surprises in the rota.
• Ramadan Kareem. When the month ends, lunch is on us, at an hour of the day of your choosing.

Short lines for a card front, a gift tag or a text

Sometimes the card is small, or the message is a text sent at sunset, or the words have to fit on a tag tied to a box of dates. Short lines fail when they try to keep the warmth and drop the information. Keep the greeting, keep one fact, and let the length go.

• Ramadan Mubarak. Thinking of you at sunset.
• A blessed Ramadan, and easy evenings.
• For the month: peace, patience, and good company at iftar.
• Ramadan Kareem, from our house to yours.
• One month of sunsets, and you in my thoughts at every one.

Lines to leave out

Four regulars, all of them sent with good intentions every year.

Eid Mubarak! (sent in the first week of Ramadan)
Bet you cannot wait to get a massive lunch down you!
I could never do that. I would be dead by Tuesday.
Ramadan is the month when you fast so you can understand how poor people feel, which I think is lovely.

The first is the wrong festival, and it tells the reader you know one phrase and spent it early. The second makes the fast sound like a diet with a binge at the end of it. The third hands them your stamina to admire at a moment when theirs is being spent on something else entirely. The fourth explains their own religion to them, slightly wrong, in their own card. If a line you have drafted could be said to any Muslim in any year, it is not finished. Put a name in it, a fact in it, or take it out.

Turn it into a group card

A street, a team, a family scattered across three time zones: Ramadan is one of the better arguments for a group card, because the greeting only has to be got right once, at the top, and then everybody underneath it just has to write like a person. A group card with multiple signers lets each of them do that in their own words, and the card can be set to arrive on the first morning of the month instead of whenever the paper one finishes its rounds. You can create a card online in a couple of minutes and leave it open through the first week, which is when the honest lines turn up.

The method on this page is the same one used in what to write in a Mother's Day card: greeting chosen on purpose, one specific sentence, nothing performed. For households marking the month at a distance, the guide to virtual celebration cards covers getting far-apart people into the same moment, which is what an iftar over a video call mostly is.

Layla's Eid card from 2023 is still on the side of our fridge, held up by a magnet shaped like a strawberry that has lost most of its red. Right greeting. Wrong month. She sends an Eid card every year now, and inside it she writes the dates for the next Ramadan, in pen, with probably written after both of them, because the moon gets the last word. Ours still go in the calendar in pencil.