Christmas Letter Maker
Your family’s year on one page, with photos: print it, or send it as a PDF or Word file.
As it prints 1 page
Make it yours
The Jensens and their year are an example.
Up to 8 sections. Each line you type starts a new paragraph. Empty sections are left out.
Your photos are read inside this page and never uploaded. Each keeps its own shape: nothing is cropped.
Your letter and photos never leave your device. The pages are laid out and drawn inside this page, and the PDF, PNG and Word file are built in your browser; nothing is saved or uploaded. The page counts one anonymous “PDF”, “PNG” or “Word downloaded” event, and nothing you typed goes with it.
How to write a Christmas letter people enjoy reading
- Keep it to one page. Most people read a Christmas letter standing in the hallway with the rest of the post. 300 to 500 words, plus three or four photos, fills one page of most designs at a comfortable 10–11 pt; the counter above the sections shows where you are. Past one page the text shrinks a little (never below 9 pt), then runs onto a second page. A third page is not offered: the page tells you how many words to trim.
- One small story per person beats a list of achievements. “Theo asked if the tooth fairy pays more for a tooth found in a potato” is remembered; “Theo is doing well at school” is not. Use the prompts in each empty section (biggest adventure, what made us laugh, what’s next) to find that one story.
- Pick the shape that fits your year. One per person suits a family with children; one per month or season suits a couple, a year of travel or a year with one big change. You can rename any section, so “The dog” or “The house” work too.
- Be honest about the hard parts, briefly. A sentence about a loss or an illness, and what helped, reads better than leaving it out; friends who already know will notice the silence.
- Choose photos with faces, and few of them. One photo per person or per big moment is plenty. Wide photos sit in a row, tall ones get room in the photo-grid and minimal designs. Nothing is cropped, so a face at the edge of a picture stays in.
- Print at 100%. Every design keeps at least 8 mm clear at the edges, more than the 3–5 mm home printers cannot reach. The Kraft, low ink design prints only thin brown lines and the words, so a batch of 40 letters costs very little ink.
Questions
Can I edit the Christmas newsletter template in Word?
Yes. Word (.docx) downloads a file where every word is ordinary text you can change, with your photos and the design’s border art inside it as pictures. Word sets it in Georgia, in one column, so lines break in other places than on the PDF, and a long letter may run onto a second page there; the border art sits on page one. The file opens in Microsoft Word, LibreOffice and Apple Pages. Because the photos go in as PNG pictures, a Word file with six photos is several megabytes.
Can I use it with Google Docs?
Yes: upload the .docx to Google Drive and open it with Google Docs. The text, the photos and the border come along and stay editable. Google Docs sometimes moves a picture that sits behind the text in front of it when it converts the file; if the border covers your title, click it and choose Behind text.
Is it free?
Yes. No sign-up, no watermark, no paid version. Everything is made in your browser, so there is no account and nothing to log in to.
PDF, PNG or Word: which should I download?
The PDF is exactly what you see, one or two pages, and is the one to print or attach to an e-mail. The PNG is page one as a 300 dpi picture (2480 × 3508 pixels on A4), handy for a message app or a photo printer. Word is for changing the words after you download, or for adding something the form does not have.
A4 or US Letter?
Both. The page starts on US Letter if your browser is set to US or Canadian English and on A4 everywhere else; switch under Paper. Letter is 18 mm shorter than A4, so the same letter may need a slightly smaller size or a second page on Letter.
Why does my phone photo not load?
Some browsers cannot read HEIC photos from iPhones. Share the photo as JPEG first (on an iPhone, set Settings → Camera → Formats to Most Compatible, or pick the photo through the Photos app, which converts it). The page says so when a photo cannot be read.