Thanksgiving eCard

In the United States, Thanksgiving is the fourth Thursday in November. In Canada it is the second Monday in October.

If you are sending across the border, use the recipient's date rather than your own.

Thank them for something specific from this year. The holiday is about gratitude, so a card naming exactly what you are grateful to them for does the occasion properly: the meal they hosted, the help they gave, the fact they picked up the phone.

General thankfulness is what everyone else will write.

Acknowledge that they are not there, warmly rather than pityingly. Saying you noticed, that they are missed at the table, and that you are thinking of them covers it.

Adding a recorded message from the people who are together is a genuinely lovely thing to send someone spending the day alone.

Send it on the morning of Thanksgiving or a day or two before. The morning itself is ideal: it arrives before the day gets busy and while the point of the holiday is front of mind.

Sending it after the day has passed loses most of the effect.

Yes, and it is one of the better professional cards precisely because it is about gratitude rather than celebration. Thank them for the year's work, name something specific that went well, and keep it short.

It reads as more sincere than a generic end-of-year greeting. A dedicated thank you card works well for this too.

Name them. The first Thanksgiving after a death is defined by the empty chair, and most bereaved families would far rather someone mentioned the person than carefully avoided doing so.

A sentence remembering them, followed by warmth for the people still at the table, is the right shape.