What to Write in a Lunar New Year Card

The first line of a Lunar New Year card is the difficult part, and it is difficult for a reason that has nothing to do with language.

The occasion is marked across several cultures with different names and customs. The Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center describes Chinese new year alongside Vietnamese Tet, Korean Seollal, Tibetan Losar and Mongolian Tsagaan Sar, and notes that Losar does not necessarily fall on the same day at all.

So the question is not which phrase is most correct. It is which tradition the person reading is in.

If you do not know

Happy Lunar New Year, in English, is clear and safe. Nobody will think less of you for it, and it is considerably better than confidently using a phrase from the wrong language.

If you do know, use theirs. Gong xi fa cai in Mandarin and gung hay fat choy in Cantonese are both wishes for prosperity. Chuc mung nam moi is the Vietnamese new year greeting. Saehae bok mani badeuseyo is the Korean one. Losar Tashi Delek for Tibetan Losar.

The rule I use is the one that works in every language: if they greet you first, greet them back the same way.

Prosperity is not impersonal here

This surprises people used to Western new year cards, where wishing somebody wealth would read as odd or slightly grasping.

Here it is conventional. Wishes for prosperity, good fortune, health and a smooth year are the standard content of the occasion, not a lazy substitute for something warmer. Gong xi fa cai literally wishes prosperity.

So a card that wishes someone a prosperous year is doing the traditional thing rather than avoiding sentiment. You can then add the personal line on top, which is where the card becomes yours.

The zodiac, and whose

Naming the animal is a nice touch and it needs one check. Royal Museums Greenwich notes that Vietnam has a cat where Chinese tradition has a rabbit and a buffalo in place of the ox, that Japan has a boar rather than a pig, and that Thailand has a Naga in place of the dragon.

So a card wishing a Vietnamese friend a wonderful year of the rabbit is a small and avoidable miss. 2026 is the year of the Horse and 2027 the year of the Goat in the Chinese zodiac.

For close family and friends

Greeting, one specific line, one wish. The middle part is the card.

If they are traveling home, say something about that. If they are not, and would like to be, say that plainly and briefly. If they are hosting fifteen people over several days, acknowledge the scale of it, because that is the part nobody thanks them for.

For example: Happy Lunar New Year. I know you have four days of visitors and I would like you to know that somebody outside your house is thinking about how much cooking that is. Wishing you a prosperous year and one uninterrupted afternoon. We wrote what to write in a New Year card for New Year on its own.

For colleagues

Short and warm. Happy Lunar New Year, and hope you get a proper break with your family.

One practical thing managers get wrong: the travel around this festival is enormous, and a colleague may want a longer block of leave than the single day a calendar suggests. Ask early rather than waiting for the request, which turns an awkward ask into a plan.

Also check the date rather than remembering it. It moves, because the calendar is lunisolar. 2026 falls on 17 February and 2027 on 6 February.

What to avoid

Do not write about fresh starts and clean slates in the way a January card would. It is a different occasion with its own content, and importing the resolutions register flattens it into a version of something else.

Do not comment on the food being exotic, which happens more than you would think in cards from colleagues and is always meant warmly.

And do not use a phrase you cannot pronounce and have not checked. A wrong transliteration in permanent ink is a small thing that sits on a mantelpiece for two weeks.

For a child

Children get red envelopes and rarely get cards, which makes a card an unusual and memorable object rather than one of a stack.

Write to them directly and about them. If they are old enough to be learning the language, one phrase written out is a genuinely nice thing to include, and getting it slightly wrong in a card to a child is charming rather than embarrassing.

If they have just been through the round of visiting, they have spent several days being polite to relatives at length, and a card that acknowledges that with some sympathy will make them laugh.

If you are writing in the language

A short, correct phrase beats a long, approximate one every time, and this is more true in a script you cannot check than in one you can.

Write the phrase you are sure of, then write the rest in English. Mixing is completely normal in real correspondence between families, and it reads as natural rather than as a shortfall. What reads badly is a whole card assembled from a translation tool, which native readers spot immediately and which puts the attention on your effort rather than on them.

The specific detail

As with every card I write about, the ones people keep have a fact in them. A dish, a journey, a name, a number of guests survived.

That is the same instinct behind a song written about somebody, which we make at Ditty City, so read that as interested rather than neutral. What to include in a personalized song is about which details carry weight, and it works just as well for four lines in a card.

For the gift, Lunar New Year gift ideas and Red envelope etiquette. The what to write hub has the rest of the cards.