By tracybowens Last updated: February 13, 2022

The 15 Best Words to Add Warmth and Personality to Your Holiday Business Greetings

It is already starting.

Cold weather, snow, bright lights, trees and sweet treats.

It is officially the season to send holiday greetings to your customers and business acquaintances.

As you start writing them, you might run into a tricky problem.

You are saying the same thing over and over and over again, so all of your greetings sound the same.

Boring.

You want everyone receiving your holiday greetings to feel special. If you write something generic and lacking personality, they’ll just think you sent them the contents of a business holiday greeting template.

Not good.

How can you avoid this fate? How can you find some more inspiration for creative greetings?

Here’s the good news I have for you: By the time you’ve finished reading this article, you’ll have the words you need to create business holiday greetings that sparkle and bring warmth to the hearts of their readers.

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

The Dos and Don’ts of Business Holiday Greetings

Dos are things you should do. Don’ts are things you should not do.

This is important to know—even the most delicious spices won’t taste good if you use them incorrectly. So, there are a few things you need to know about writing business holiday greetings before I give you those 15 spicy words. Think of this as advice telling you “how to say it” and “how not to say it.”

Dos

Begin with a seasonal expression or appropriate holiday greeting. For example, you can start a letter with “Seasonal greetings to you!” This will let readers know right away that you’re sending a holiday greeting.

Express appreciation for the person you’re writing to (and their business) and express your wish of being of service to them in the future. This adds to the personalized touch.

Wish the person you’re writing to happiness, success, health and/or prosperity. For example, you can write something like, “all the best to you in 2016.”

Don’ts

Don’t let your holiday greeting be your only message. Such a card or letter screams “mass production” and, let me tell you, that is worse than sending no card at all. Make it personal by adding your own message to each individual person. Include details that show you know the person and their company.

Don’t use a holiday greeting message as a sneaky way to get a point across (make people understand or believe something), lecture the group or relay office news.

Don’t turn your holiday greeting into an aggressive sales letter.

More Holiday Greeting Writing Tips

It is not just the words you choose that will make your message sparkle. As you write your holiday greeting message consider that:

Even though the holiday season may be joyous for you, it might not be for everyone. Santa may know who’s naughty and nice, but you can’t know who’s happy and sad. So here’s what you do—choose a message that is low-key. Express your good wishes, but make sure that it’s not gushing with cheer (overly cheerful).

Not everyone has the same religious beliefs. Their new year may not begin on the first of January. Show respect for these facts by choosing terms that aren’t associated with religion such as “the holidays,” “this season” and “at this time of year,” and include the year in your happy new year wishes (“wishing you success and happiness in 2016”).

While you don’t want to weigh your letter down with office news, feel free to include personal updates and important information such as a change of address.

Types of Holiday Greetings

Greeting cards, letters, email—which format choice will best suit your message? The choice is really up to you, but as with all choices each one has advantages and disadvantages.

Greeting Cards — The good old greeting card is as much a feature of the holiday season as holiday sales and decorations. Do you love greeting cards? Then go ahead and send them. Just avoid the temptation to simply add your signature to cards with mass produced messages. Make the card meaningful by adding your own message. Better yet, buy a greeting card that’s blank inside and make your message the highlight of the card.

Business Letters — How can you make your holiday greeting even more personal? Put it in a letter. You can make a letter as personal as you want by using different designs and graphics. Plus you can truly individualize the content. Your business associates know this and will appreciate your efforts. Oh, and don’t worry if you have bad handwriting. It’s acceptable to type your holiday greeting business letter.

Email — Even though sending holiday greetings in an email or sending an email greeting card has become a very popular option, these digital messages lose that personal touch for some people. Does that mean it’s best to avoid using this format? By all means, no. I advise, though, using it with business associates who you usually communicate with via email and who also send e-cards to you.

Resources for Improving Your Holiday Business Greetings

I’m going to get you started in the right direction, but these aren’t the only words that you can use to add spice to your business holiday greetings. If you’re looking for more try:

Performing a search on the Internet using the keywords “holiday greetings.” You’ll find greeting cards and lists that will feed your creativity.

Looking at greeting cards in stores.

Studying the greeting cards, letters and emails you receive.

15 Meaningful Words to Use in Holiday Greetings to Business Partners and Customers

1. Blessings

A blessing is a thing that leads to happiness or helps bring good things to you. A common holiday greeting phrase using the word “blessing” is “seasons’s blessings.”

You may also see the term “to count your blessings,” meaning to stop and take time to be thankful for the good things in your life.

How would you use apply this to a business holiday greeting? Try saying something like, “This time of year compels us to count our blessings—and among them are good customers like you.”

2. Celebration

The holiday season is a time of celebration. Celebration occurs when people do enjoyable or special things in honor of the holidays. So instead of just writing, “Happy Holidays,” add your own personal holiday wishes to the phrase and show that you are celebrating this year. You might write something like, “In celebration of the holiday season…”

3. Gratitude

What do you feel when you appreciate having something? Gratitude. Since you want to send your business associates, clients or customers a holiday greeting, I’m thinking that you appreciate them and want to tell them so.

Do that with a phrase like this, “I would like to express my sincere gratitude for your business over the past year.”

Include the phrase in a sentence like this, “As we at (the name of your company) look back over 2015, we remember with sincere gratitude our friendly and faithful customers. Customers like you.”

You can also use the word “grateful” and write something like, “We are grateful for friendly and faithful customers like you.”

4. Happiness

Happiness is the feeling of pleasure and excitement that you have because of your life or general situation. While the holiday season isn’t reserved for happiness, it is a time when people tend to wish people happiness.

Here’s how. You can write, “Everyone here at (the name of your company) sends you best wishes for happiness, health and prosperity throughout 2016.”

Or, you can write, “I hope the New Year brings you health and happiness.”

Here’s yet another option, “We send our warmest wishes for health and happiness.”

5. Health

The state of being free from illness is health. Wishing people health during the holiday season is common and often goes with the word “happiness.”

Just take a look at the sentences under “happiness” to see how often the two words are used together.

If you want to say something a bit different try this, “We wish you the gifts of love, friendship and good health.”

6. Joy

What is the word for feelings of great happiness? Joy.

Spread wishes of joy by spicing up your business holiday greetings with a phrase like “small daily joys.” All you have to do is add it to your wish for a year of health and happiness.

You can also use the word joy to talk about the season, “May the beauty and joys of the season stay with you during the whole year.”

7. Peace

The opposite of war is peace. Partner this word with “happiness” as in “Wishing you a new year of peace and happiness.”

You can also use this word in a greeting like this, “Wishing you the gifts of the season—Peace, Joy and Hope.

8. Pleasure

When you have a feeling of happiness, enjoyment, or satisfaction you are feeling pleasure.

Try spicing up this sentence that I already gave you: “This Holiday Season we wish to extend our warmest greetings and best wishes for a New Year full of happiness and health.”

Here’s my recommendation for using the word “pleasure” in this sentence: “It’s our pleasure this Holiday Season to extend our warmest greetings and best wishes for a New Year full of happiness and health.”

9. Prosperity

Ahh, prosperity. Something that many people strive for. Oh, let me back up. What’s prosperity? It’s what you have when you’re successful, usually because you’ve made lots of money.

These are business greetings after all, so it’s common to wish people prosperity.

Use this word in a phrase like this: “May your year be filled with happiness, health, and prosperity.”

You can also wish that people “have a prosperous new year.“

10. Rejoice

When you show that you are happy about something, you are rejoicing. You are celebrating job.

Open your greeting with a phrase like, “As we rejoice in the magic of the holiday season…”

Then follow that happy idea with your personal message.

11. Remembrances

Remembrance is the act of thinking back about a person, thing or event. How can you use this in your holiday greetings?

Well, you can use another form of the word and say, “Remembering you this holiday season.”

12. Season

While you might think of spring, summer, autumn and winter when you hear this word, English speakers also use it to talk about particular periods of time during the year in general. You know, like football season, baseball season or beach season. Well, as you’ve seen, we often talk about the holiday season as well.

You can use this word in phrases like:

“All the best of the season.”

“Compliments of the season.”

“Magic of the holiday season.”

“Season’s greetings.”

“Wishes for a joyous season.”

“Have a wonderful holiday season.”

Just take your pick!

13. Serenity

Serenity is a feeling of calm and peacefulness.

Add this word to wishes of joy and health by writing, “We’re wishing you joy, health and serenity this holiday season.”

14. Success

A person achieves success when they meet their goals. The goal may be to obtain wealth, respect or fame. You can also achieve personal success and professional success that is measured by something important to you personally.

Wishing your business acquaintances success is similar to wishing them prosperity.

Vary your holiday greeting by sending wishes of continued success.

Write something similar to this, “Wishing you a season of joy and continued success in 2016.”

15. Wishes

In holiday greetings, English people use the word “wishes” or some form of it to say that we want whatever follows the word to happen to the person to whom we are writing.

For example, you can write, “wishes for a joyous season,” “wishing you happiness and health,” “wishing you continuing success” or anything similarly positive. What do you wish for your business acquaintances? Just put it after the word “wish.”

Those are the 15 words we have for you this year.

Good luck writing your own holiday greetings!

Here’s wishing you a happy holiday season and continued success with your English language learning in 2016.