47 Purim Messages (for the Card, the Basket and the Tag)

First, the day itself, because a Purim card is a delivery with a deadline

Purim is one day, and the card belongs inside it. In 2027 the festival begins at sundown on Monday 22 March, after the daytime Fast of Esther, and the main day is Tuesday 23 March, with the Megillah read on the Monday evening and again on Tuesday. In Jerusalem and other old walled cities the celebration moves a day later, to Wednesday 24 March, which is Shushan Purim, so a card posted to Jerusalem on the Tuesday is not late, it is early. Everywhere else, a Purim card that lands on the Thursday is a souvenir. Send it to arrive by the Tuesday, hand it over with the basket, or do not send a card at all and send a text instead.

Getting the date right takes one extra check in 2027, because 5787 is a leap year on the Hebrew calendar and Purim falls in the second month of Adar, Adar II, which is why it lands as late as 23 March. In a leap year there are two months called Adar, and anyone who circles the first one in a diary has sent a February card for a March festival. It happens, and recipients are gracious about it, and the card still missed the day. Check the year in front of you, not the date from last year's card, which in 2026 was 3 March and will mislead you by three weeks.

The day carries four set jobs, and a card touches only one of them. Hearing the Megillah is the first. Mishloach manot, gifts of ready food sent to friends, is the second, and that is where your card lives. Matanot la'evyonim, gifts to the poor, is the third, and it is money or food given on the day itself, not a sentiment in an envelope. The fourth is the seudah, the festive meal. A generous card never counts as the third job done, and the lines below never claim it does. What a card can do, and what no competitor bank bothers to teach, is smaller: name one true thing about this person's Purim, a costume, a filling, a moment at the reading, and let the greeting carry that instead of carrying joy in general.

For family, in a card that arrives on the day

Family cards can carry the archive. A Purim a decade ago, the relative who always plays the same part, the filling argument that restarts every March: all of it is material a stranger's line cannot use, and all of it is sitting there waiting. Keep the greeting first, the memory second, and do not grade anybody's observance on the way through.

For family far away, the card has a second job: it is the part of the basket that survives the post. Food parcels go astray, melt and arrive on the Thursday. A card posted a week ahead, with the parcel promised separately, lands on the day even when the hamantaschen do not, and it gives the reader something to put on the mantel while the seudah table fills up without them.

• Chag Purim Sameach. May your table be loud, your hamantaschen still warm, and somebody else on washing up after the seudah.
• Happy Purim, Grandma. I am still telling people about the year you read the Megillah parts in different voices and gave Haman a cough.
• To the best Mordechai in the family: thank you for shaking that grogger through ten chapters and losing your voice by supper.
• Purim Sameach. Save me two poppy seed ones. The apricot never survives the car ride home anyway.
• Happy Purim to the house that taught me a costume counts even when it is only a crown cut from a cereal box.
• May Esther's nerve show up in this family again this year, ideally before anyone has to make a hard phone call.
• Sending love for Purim, and a promise in writing: this year the mishloach manot comes round before lunch, not after dark with excuses.

For friends, with the noise left in

Purim is the loud festival, and a friend card that reads like a condolence note in fancy dress has missed the day entirely. Write the plan into the card if there is one, because half of these cards are really logistics wearing a greeting, and that is fine. Funny lines pass the say-it-out-loud test here: if you would not shout it across a kitchen over grogger noise, rewrite it.

• Happy Purim. Your Queen Esther costume last year had a train. A train. I have not recovered, and I do not plan to.
• Chag Sameach, and may your grogger be the loudest one in the row when Haman's name comes round again.
• Purim plan, in writing so you cannot deny it later: Megillah at seven, your place after, and I am on hamantaschen, not on dishes.
• May your Purim be exactly as upside down as the story, the quiet one leading the dancing and the organised one losing the list.
• Happy Purim to the friend who fasted on the Monday and still turned up carrying two trays. Sit down now. We have it from here.
• If Esther could walk into that throne room uninvited, you can walk into the exam, the interview, the meeting. Go in like you were sent for.
• Save me a seat at the seudah and one story I have not heard. You owe me one from last year, and Purim debts count double.

On a mishloach manot basket tag, where the card travels with food

The usual standard for the basket itself is two different ready foods, the kind that can be eaten as they are, and the tag is where a sender quietly proves it: poppy seed hamantaschen and a bottle of grape juice, apricot hamantaschen and a small cake. Naming both on the tag saves the recipient the excavation, and it tells anyone with an allergy in the house what they are holding before the wrapping comes off. A tag that lists nothing sends the whole basket to the back of a cupboard until somebody brave opens it.

The basket tag is a different object from a card, and it fails in its own way. It is read standing up, often on a doorstep, by someone holding three other baskets. It has room for the greeting, one line about what is inside, and a signature, and the signature is the part people skip, which is how a basket gets thanked to a synagogue office and re-gifted down the street. Sign it with a name or a house number a neighbour can place. Keep allergy information on the tag too if your baking needs it, written plainly, not as a joke in small print.

• Baked this morning, still warm if you are quick. Happy Purim, from number 14.
• Two kinds, because we could not agree at our table. The apricot won. Love, the family upstairs.
• For your Purim table, with thanks for the sugar in February and the ladder in October. From next door.
• Chag Sameach. The small ones are for the kids. The big tin is not, whatever they tell you.
• Mishloach manot, delivered on the day, as it should be. Eat the poppy seed first. From us at the end of the lane.
• Happy Purim. Nothing in here needs reheating, and the card is the part that is actually from me.
• For the seudah, or for the quiet minute after it, when the groggers finally stop. With love, from across the street, number 9.

For children, built around the costume and the grogger

A child's Purim card is read once, out loud, usually with food in the other hand, and then it lives or dies on whether it mentioned the costume. So mention the costume. Keep the plot light at this age: a brave queen, a foolish villain whose name gets drowned out, and cookies with corners. The killing in the story can wait for an older reader, and a card that tries to carry it to a six year old in a superhero cape has misjudged its reader completely.

• Happy Purim, loudest grogger in the building. Shake it every single time, even the times the grown ups miss.
• Your costume has a cape, a crown and one shoe that lights up. Queen Esther never stood a chance.
• Chag Sameach. May your hamantaschen have the filling you actually like, and may nobody trade you a poppy seed in secret.
• For the bravest Mordechai at the Purim spiel: you remembered every line and bowed twice. We counted.
• Happy Purim. The story has a queen who was scared and did it anyway. Sound like anyone who lost a tooth this month?
• Eat one now, save one for after the Megillah, and hide the third from your brother. These are instructions, not advice.
• Purim Sameach, superstar. Next year you are reading a verse out loud, and I am keeping this card to prove you agreed.

From someone who is not Jewish, and is not going to pretend

An outsider card works when it stays an outsider card. Say what you were given, a meal, an explanation, a seat at the back, and thank the person for that specifically. One greeting in Hebrew or Yiddish is welcome and most families will be pleased you tried; a card built entirely out of borrowed phrases reads as a costume, and Purim already has enough of those. Chag Purim Sameach means happy Purim holiday. Ah Freilichen Purim is the Yiddish version, a joyful Purim. Pick one, spell it carefully, and write the rest in your own voice.

• Happy Purim. I do not know the whole story the way you do, but I know a brave queen when I hear one, and your table is where I learned it.
• Chag Purim Sameach, and I practised saying it. Thank you for the hamantaschen, the translation, and for not laughing the first time.
• Wishing you a joyful Purim. The basket on my porch last year was the best post I have had in a decade on this street.
• Happy Purim to my favourite neighbours. I will be the quiet one at the back of the Megillah reading, shaking nothing and learning plenty.
• No costume photo from me this year, because mine was a paper crown held on with tape, and your children were kind about it. Happy Purim, and thank you.
• Purim Sameach. You explained the grogger, the fast on the Monday and why Tuesday is the loud day, and I remembered all three. That is teaching.

Short lines for a text, a photo caption or the top of a card

Short is not a lesser card. A text sent on the Tuesday morning, while the Megillah crowd is still finding its shoes, does the day's real work for anyone you will not see in person. These are built to travel alone, without a basket under them, so each one carries the greeting and one image and then stops.

• Chag Purim Sameach. Loud day, warm table, brave queen.
• Purim Sameach. Two hamantaschen, no meetings, early night.
• Happy Purim. Crown on, grogger up, dishes later.
• Ah Freilichen Purim. That is the Yiddish one. I am showing off.
• To Esther's nerve and Mordechai's timing: happy Purim.
• Sameach. Corner seat at the seudah, please, the one away from the speaker.
• Purim is the one day the noise is the point. Enjoy every decibel.

For someone whose year has been hard, in a plainer register

The first Purim after a death in the family is its own case, and it is common enough that many synagogues keep a list of households in their first year. Send the card to those houses first, in this register, and send it a day early rather than on the morning, so it is read at a kitchen table and not in a hallway full of other people's baskets. Skip the group card for that household this year. Six signatures performing cheer is worse than one name writing plainly.

Purim joy is commanded, which is exactly why it can land badly on a person who is grieving, ill or broke. Do not order anybody to rejoice in a card. Lower the volume, keep the greeting, drop the costume jokes, and never attach a lesson about hidden miracles to somebody else's bad year; the story can sit in the card quietly without being pointed at them. If you are sending food, say plainly that nothing is owed back, because a basket that creates a debt is not mishloach manot, it is an invoice with ribbons.

• Happy Purim, quietly. No costume is required from you this year, and nobody here is keeping score.
• Thinking of you on Purim. The story turns on a day nobody saw coming, and I am holding on to that for you rather than preaching it.
• Chag Sameach. If the seudah is too much, there is a plate with your name on it at ours, before or after, with no explaining needed.
• Purim Sameach. Esther did the brave thing scared, in a palace, with no guarantee attached. You have been doing smaller versions of that all winter.
• A basket is on its way, with no visit attached to it. Eat what you like, pass the rest on, and let that be the whole exchange.
• For Purim, one plain wish: a week where the news about you is only good, and boring, and easy to tell.

Lines to leave out of a Purim card

Three shapes of line fail every year, and they fail for the same reason: they borrow the festival's props and miss its people.

Happy Purim! Hope your Jewish Halloween is a total blast.

Costumes are a custom of the day, not the day itself, and most Jewish readers hear that comparison as their festival being filed under somebody else's. Write about this person's costume instead, which was probably better anyway.

May you drink until you cannot tell anything apart. You have earned it.

The drinking line is a Talmud joke about telling Haman and Mordechai apart, and it curdles fast in a real card: to anyone who has stopped drinking, is pregnant, is driving the children home, or is simply tired of being assigned a personality by a greeting. Cut it. There is always another line.

Everything worked out in the story, so this year will work out for your family too.

Never spend the story's ending on somebody else's situation. A card can hope. It cannot promise on Esther's behalf, and a reader in a hard year will hear the promise, not the hope, and will remember who made it.

Turn it into a group card

A street, a class parents list or an office with one Jewish colleague and nine willing signers can turn a single card into the day's delivery: one card, signed by everyone, arriving on the Tuesday with the basket it belongs to. A group ecard with multiple signers handles the collecting without a phone tree, and you can create a card online in a couple of minutes, which matters in a week when the baking is also due. Keep one person in charge of the deadline, because a group card that arrives on the Friday has missed the festival it was for.

For the wider holiday shelf, Diwali wishes covers another festival where the food, the date and one true detail do the same work, and holiday card messages helps when one household card has to respect several calendars at once. Neither replaces a Purim card sent to a Purim household on the day. The day is the message, in this case.

The tin those 2019 hamantaschen travelled in still sits in my cupboard in Teaneck, its lid dented where I dropped it on Tova's driveway setting the basket down. It holds loose screws now, and a spare key to a lock nobody in the house can identify. Tova has asked for the tin back twice. It is a four block walk, and I keep arriving at her door with other things in my hands.