24 Christmas Card Trends and Ideas We Love for 2024

With playful elements inspired by ribbon, ricrac, and lace, this trend is the natural progression of last year’s obsession with all things bows. Look for designs incorporating these details in a way that nods to vintage clothing and scrapbooking — think stitched details, textiles, and sketch-like illustrations.

You can never go wrong with a retro-inspired Christmas card design. This year, we’re particularly enamored with designs that have a funky 1950s and 60s feel, featuring typography that would look at home in an old issue of The New Yorker and illustrative details that call to mind classic mid-century animation styles.

Christmas cards make for natural keepsakes, which is why we love this year’s vintage photo trend so much. Look for designs that give your family photo a retro feel with polaroid borders or scrapbook-style corners, sepia or black-and-white filters, and holiday well-wishes scrawled in handwritten-looking typography.

If you’re a lover of cottagecore and all things antique, this is the Christmas card trend for you. These cute cards frame your family photos with beautiful illustrative patterns inspired by ornate Victorian-era wallpaper. The trick to getting it right? Choose a design that features the same colors in your photo to avoid your family’s sweet smiles getting lost in all of the illustrative details. Uploading your photo before browsing Minted’s library of 19th-century-inspired Christmas cards is a great way to narrow down your search!

Cottage Floral
by Julie Murray

Decorative Vintage Frame
by Lucrecia Caporale

Tapestry Holiday
by Chris Griffith

Pro Tips:

• Minted’s Christmas card designs come with a matching envelope that can be pre-addressed for free in a font that perfectly matches the vibe you’re going for this year — whether it be preppy, funky, or classic.
• Keep track of the addresses of everyone on your list with the digital address book in Minted’s app. When it comes time to place your order, all of your addresses will be printed onto your envelopes for no extra cost.

Stripes, plaids, and polka dots in energetic color combinations are back in a big way for everything from fashion to home decor. Our independent designers couldn’t help but get in on the new prep trend this Christmas, and the preppy cards they created are the perfect combination of timeless and of-the-moment.

Whether you’re bringing holiday mischief and magic to life for little ones or are a lover of all things fun, this year’s crop of playful Christmas cards is sure to be right up your alley. Look for designs with a casual vibe that feature cartoon-inspired illustrations of ornaments, Christmas lights, and stockings, and squiggle details.

For a more refined take on the playful Christmas card trend, look for designs that render classic holiday iconography like Christmas trees, doves, reindeer, trumpets, and mistletoe in whimsical, storybook-inspired illustrations.

If you have a photo that you want to let speak for itself or are just a lover of clean lines, then go for a Christmas card with a minimalist design. These look best when paired with a heavyweight cardstock like Minted’s luxe Doubleweight or Tripleweight paper and can be made extra special with letter-pressed and foil-pressed details.

Wrap your holiday card in festive cheer with a botanical design that features a beautiful illustration of a holiday wreath or garland filled with holly, mistletoe, evergreen, and little red berries. These Christmas cards are a beautiful choice if your style leans a little bit more traditional, or if you’re looking for a holiday card to send to your business’s treasured clients and customers.

Dreaming of a white Christmas? Go for a holiday card design that feels like stepping into a snow globe complete with illustrations of snow-dusted pine trees, glowing Christmas lights, cozy mugs of steaming-hot cocoa, and more. Like the botanical trend, these cards are perfect if your style leans more traditional and if you’re a lover of a classic Christmas aesthetic.

If your favorite part of the holidays is twinkling Christmas lights and the chance to embrace your love of all that glitters, a foil-pressed holiday card is the perfect idea for you. All of Minted’s foil-pressed holiday cards are available in eight foil colors, including sparkly gold and silver (which pair perfectly with green, red, and black card designs), shimmery icy blue, and warm rose gold.

The holidays are all about traditions, whether it be serving the same roast turkey recipe your grandmother perfected decades ago, hosting your annual ugly sweater party, or charting something new for your family. Going for a Christmas card that features your family crest is a fun way to nod to the traditions of the season, and make your card feel completely custom. Look for a card that features a crest that you can customize, or create your own using Minted’s selection of crests and monograms to add to your favorite design.

There are a couple of genres of classic Christmas cards that you can choose from if you want to go for a design that is sure to be a crowd pleaser. The first focuses on illustrated details and typography that lean into holiday nostalgia — think nutcrackers, ornaments, Christmas trees, doves, etc. — and often forgo including a photo altogether (or relegate photos to the backside of the card). The second pairs plenty of room for family photos with vintage-inspired fonts, colors, and classic prints like plaid or subtle striped borders.

Embrace the true spirit of Christmas with a card that celebrates all of the blessings you and your family have enjoyed this year. From messages of peace on Earth to those that praise the glory of God, you’re sure to find a faith-rooted design that speaks to you in our collection of beautiful religious Christmas cards.

You can’t go wrong with a Christmas card centered around the color of the season! We love how our collection of red holiday card designs all manage to feel classic and timeless — even if they lean into some of the trending holiday card styles we shared above. The best part? A pop of red typography or design elements will look great against nearly any type of family photo.

Having fun with fonts is a great holiday card idea if you’re looking for ways to make a minimalist design more playful. The trick here is choosing the photo you want to use for your card first, and then finding a design where the typography frames it perfectly (our “use my photo” feature makes this super easy). And remember, you can always use Minted’s customizer to change the color of the typography to add just the right amount of contrast to your image!

Looking for holiday card ideas that are guaranteed to stand out? Go for a thoroughly modern Christmas card design! Contemporary designs forgo realistic illustrated details for abstract design elements, cool color blocking, and photos framed in arched shapes.

A bit of humor won’t put you on the naughty list, so lean into your comedic side with a Christmas or holiday card that features a message that is sure to make your friends and family laugh. Minted’s designers have come up with cards that are as clever as they are cute — but if you’d like to customize one of our designs with a hilarious message of your own, we’ve rounded up 60+ funny Christmas card ideas, too.

Make your holiday card feel like a piece of modern art with a design featuring bold colors combined in unique and unexpected ways. Go with a card that features an abstract plaid in a monochrome palette of green for something that nods to a classic Christmas look or opt for a design that features more organic, collage-inspired shapes for something that feels super modern.

Ensure your Christmas greeting doesn’t get buried deep in the basket of cards your loved ones receive by choosing a card that doubles as an ornament! Minted’s collection of holiday ornament cards features a ton of fun designs in a variety of aesthetics, photo layouts, and shapes, including classic round baubles, poinsettia-inspired flowers, snowflakes, and wreaths.

Did you pull off the perfect holiday card photo this year? If so, let it take center stage with Minted’s new selection of photo-mount holiday cards! These cards feature beautiful frames in a variety of styles that you can customize before slipping a high-quality print of your photo into (Minted will take care of the printing to keep things super easy for you) before sending them off to all of your friends and family.

A holiday card is meant to spread love and joy to everyone you send it to. So make your recipients feel like they’re unwrapping a present on Christmas morning by finishing off your envelope with a beautiful wax seal! A wax seal featuring your family’s monogram is a beautiful, old-world touch, or you could go extra festive with a wax seal featuring a Christmas tree, snowflake, or bell.

For a sophisticated way to add a bit of texture to your holiday card, opt for a design that features letterpress details. The printing style, in which words or patterns are pressed into thick cardstock and then filled with ink, results in Christmas cards that feel luxe, regardless of whether you’ve opted for a design that leans traditional or is full-on funky (our letterpress collection has cards that fit both of these aesthetics…and everything in between!).

Every order of Christmas cards from Minted includes envelopes that perfectly match the design you picked. A simple upgrade like an envelope liner — which are also available options ranging from festive metallics to prints that coordinate with your chosen card design — can make opening up your Christmas card feel like unwrapping a present.