1. Make sure there’s enough room for your letter. Amateur designers sometimes get carried away with their stationery artwork and forget to leave enough room for text. Be sure to pick something that will give you enough space to put your entire family letter on one or two pages.

2. Choose a light-colored background. A dark background will make it difficult for people to read your Christmas letter. Most professionally designed letterhead available at office supply and stationery stores has a light background designed for easy readability, but watch out for dark or bright colors when shopping for letterhead designed from amateur art.

3. Pick a paper with a simple border. Unless you’re comfortable creating multiple text boxes or manipulating tabs or indents in your word processing software, you’ll want to choose Christmas stationery that has even borders, not a design that juts into the main writing area of the paper in multiple places. Best choices are letterheads with banners across the top or bottom, with a border design that has a similar width around the whole page, or with an image in one corner so you can format most of the text around it.

You may also want to try using Christmas letter templates, rather than preprinted stationery. Templates such as the ones we offer here allow you to create your annual holiday letter in a Word document that has already been set up for your text. So there’s no guessing what the final product will look like when you print it on stationery from the store. See our Christmas letter templates here.

1. Christmas Newsletter – If chronicling your entire year in one long letter seems too daunting, think of a few major events and write a short summary of each one to create a personal newsletter. You can use programs such as Microsoft Publisher to format your Christmas newsletter into a fun update, or try one of our printable Word Christmas letter templates.

2. Multiple choice quiz or crossword puzzle – What did your son do in the school talent contest this year? How many colors did you look at before you decided to paint the kitchen walls a light blue? Keep your readers guessing by putting together a quiz or crossword puzzle that gives highlights from your year. You can find free online programs to help you with the formatting. Also, be sure to check the creative Christmas letter examples for ideas.

3. Christmas story – If you enjoy writing, create a story that weaves the events of your year into a Christmas-themed narrative. For help, use our instant Christmas letter generator or see the creative Christmas letter examples.

4. Christmas Slideshow – If you have a digital camera and a CD burner, consider making a slideshow CD to include with your Christmas card instead of a letter. Simply select a favorite song or a Christmas carol and add photos for a fun way to share images of your year. Services such as Shutterfly make it easy to create your photo show, or use an online digital scrapbooking service such as Smilebox.

5. Photo Layout – If wordsmithing isn’t your strength, skip the Christmas letter all together and send family and friends a page of photos printed from your computer. Make the photos different shapes and sizes and use captions to tell about things that happened to your family throughout the year.

6. Top 10 list – What are the 10 most important things that happened to your family this year? How about the most humorous? Or most unbelievable? A top 10 list can be a fun and easy way to describe your family’s year. Think David Letterman and you’ll be on your way.

7. C-H-R-I-S-T-M-A-S spells Christmas – Eddy Arnold’s 1961 song that gives a meaning for each letter of the word “Christmas” is a great example of how to turn a single word into a story. What did those letters mean to your family this year? C is for a trip to California? H is for the new house you bought? Use the letters of a Christmas-related word or phrase to create a Christmas letter people will be sure to remember.

8. Guest Author – How would your five-year-old child describe the year? Try writing your letter from the perspective of your child, another family member, your new neighbors, a pet, or any other person that could give your letter a fresh new outlook.