Holiday cards usually follow a familiar recipe: coordinated sweaters, one child blinking, a dog looking emotionally exhausted, and at least one parent wondering why this seemed like a good idea. Jenna Bush Hager’s 2025 Christmas card took a more imaginative route. Instead of relying entirely on a polished family portrait, the television host turned her annual greeting into a celebration of family, books, creativity, and the stories that shaped her year.
The result was warm without being syrupy, professional without feeling overly staged, and personal enough to make fans pause their scrolling. Featuring Jenna, her husband Henry Hager, their three children, two cats, and a miniature library’s worth of personality, the card quickly became one of the season’s most talked-about celebrity holiday greetings.
What Jenna Bush Hager’s 2025 Christmas Card Looks Like
The front of the Hager family’s 2025 holiday card features a hand-drawn illustration rather than a conventional group photograph. Jenna appears alongside Henry and their childrenMila, Poppy, and Halwith each family member holding or reading a book. The family’s two cats also make the scene, because apparently even literary holiday cards understand that cats will invite themselves into anything important.
The illustration is framed by the phrase, “Enjoying every moment, every chapter,” immediately establishing the card’s storytelling theme. On the reverse side, recipients see a relaxed family vacation photo accompanied by the continuation, “with the ones we love!” A second message wishes readers shelves full of stories and hearts full of joy.
It is a simple concept, but the execution gives it several layers. The illustration captures the family’s individual interests, while the candid photograph reminds viewers that the people behind the charming artwork are a real household with growing children, family trips, pets, and probably an impressive number of misplaced bookmarks.
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The Family Members Featured on the Card
Jenna and Henry Hager married in 2008 and are parents to three children. Their eldest daughter, Margaret “Mila” Laura, was 12 during the 2025 holiday season. Poppy Louise was 10, and their son, Henry “Hal” Harold, was 6. The card also included the family’s cats, giving the illustration a fuller portrait of everyday life in the Hager home.
That attention to the entire household helped distinguish the design from a generic celebrity Christmas card. It did not present the family as five perfectly arranged faces in a studio. Instead, it suggested a family absorbed in its own activities, sharing space while enjoying different stories.
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Why the Book Theme Felt So Perfect for Jenna
No one familiar with Jenna Bush Hager’s career was surprised to see books at the center of her 2025 Christmas card. Reading is not a decorative hobby she occasionally remembers when a camera appears. It has become one of the defining threads of her public work.
She launched the Read With Jenna book club on NBC’s Today in 2019, using the platform to introduce large audiences to new novels, established writers, debut authors, and stories from a wide range of perspectives. Her enthusiasm is part literary critic, part favorite English teacher, and part friend who has already bought you the paperback and would now like a full report.
The 2025 card transforms that professional identity into something domestic and affectionate. Rather than announcing, “Look, I work with books,” it shows books functioning as part of family life. The children have their own reading choices, the adults have theirs, and storytelling becomes a shared household language.
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The Clever Conform Easter Egg
One detail drew particular attention from observant fans: Jenna is illustrated holding Conform, the debut novel by Ariel Sullivan. The book was the first title released through Thousand Voices, Jenna’s publishing venture with Random House Publishing Group.
Thousand Voices was created to support debut and emerging writers working across genres that include romance, suspense, historical fiction, memoir, literary fiction, and fantasy-infused storytelling. Conform, released in October 2025, became the imprint’s opening publication.
Including the novel on the card was a subtle professional victory lap, but it never overwhelmed the family message. It worked more like a personal year-in-review detail: this was a book that mattered to Jenna, represented a major milestone in her career, and naturally belonged among the stories her family was celebrating.
In other words, it was tasteful product placement with feelings. Madison Avenue could never.
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Why Fans Could Not Get Over the Holiday Card
Online reactions focused on how creative, charming, and unusually personal the design felt. Viewers praised the illustration, the literary theme, the inclusion of the children’s interests, and the appearance of Conform. Many also appreciated that the family photograph on the back looked relaxed rather than produced within an inch of its life.
The strongest celebrity holiday cards reveal something recognizable about the people sending them. Jenna’s card clearly communicates, “This family loves stories.” It does not require an elaborate explanation, a press release, or a detective with access to a corkboard. The idea is visible immediately.
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It Celebrated Personality Instead of Perfection
Family photography can become strangely competitive during the holidays. Everyone is expected to smile simultaneously, the weather is expected to cooperate, and children are expected to temporarily stop behaving like children. Jenna’s card bypassed much of that pressure by leading with illustration.
An illustrated scene can capture personalities without demanding one flawless fraction of a second. A designer can show each person holding a meaningful object, place the pets where they belong, and create visual harmony even when real life is cheerfully chaotic.
The vacation photo on the back still gives relatives and friends the traditional pleasure of seeing how the children have grown. However, it does not carry the entire creative burden. The photo and illustration support each other, creating a card that feels both familiar and fresh.
It Told a Complete Story in Two Sides
The front-and-back structure also explains why the card was so satisfying. The illustrated side presents the theme: books, chapters, and the Hager family’s shared love of reading. The reverse provides the emotional conclusion: enjoying those chapters with loved ones.
Many holiday cards function as snapshots. This one functions as a tiny narrative. It has an opening image, a recurring metaphor, a family reveal, and a closing wish. It is essentially a very short book that arrives with an envelope instead of a dust jacket.
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Cheree Berry Helped Turn the Idea Into a Keepsake
Jenna credited designer Cheree Berry and her St. Louis-based paper business with helping create the 2025 card. The two have collaborated on Hager family paper projects over multiple years, turning the annual card into a creative tradition rather than a last-minute upload-and-print assignment.
Berry’s company specializes in personalized stationery and holiday greetings that can incorporate custom artwork, family photographs, distinctive typography, playful messages, and coordinated envelope details. That approach is visible in Jenna’s finished card, where the writing, visual concept, illustration, photograph, and paper design all feel connected.
Jenna has described the collaboration as something she anticipates each year. The process involves sharing ideas and developing a concept that reflects the family’s current chapter. That phrase is especially appropriate in 2025, when an actual chapter motif became the foundation of the card.
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Why a Professional Designer Did Not Make It Feel Impersonal
There is a common assumption that professionally designed cards must feel formal or corporate. Jenna’s card demonstrates the opposite. Thoughtful design can make personal details easier to see.
The designer did not replace the family’s personality; she organized it. The books reveal interests. The illustration creates humor and warmth. The vacation photograph provides authenticity. The wording connects the pieces. Good design acts like an excellent host: it introduces everyone, keeps the conversation moving, and somehow makes the room look cleaner than it really is.
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How the 2025 Card Fits Jenna’s Holiday Tradition
Fans of Jenna Bush Hager’s family Christmas cards know that she rarely settles for a plain portrait and a line of red script. Previous cards have leaned into humor, locations, pets, family milestones, and visual themes.
Her 2023 greeting included a family photo taken on Martha’s Vineyard and a playful “Meowy Christmas” moment involving the family cat. Her young son Hal added an appropriately unscripted touch by holding his nose in one of the pictures, a detail Jenna joked was simply part of his personality.
The 2024 card went in another direction, showing the family dressed in historical-style costumes and white wigs. Hal, committed as ever to creative independence, appeared dressed as a dinosaur or dragon while everyone else followed the old-fashioned theme. The message played with the idea of living “hopefully ever after.”
Against that background, the Jenna Bush Hager 2025 Christmas card feels like an evolution rather than a sudden departure. It maintains the humor and individuality of earlier years but ties the design more closely to Jenna’s expanding work in publishing.
What Makes a Celebrity Christmas Card Memorable?
Celebrity holiday cards attract attention because they offer a controlled glimpse of private family life. Yet the cards that remain memorable usually contain something more interesting than beautiful clothes and expensive scenery.
They show humor, acknowledge chaos, mark a meaningful change, or reveal a family ritual. Jenna’s card succeeds in all four areas. The illustration is playful. The vacation picture feels natural. The publishing reference marks a career milestone. The annual collaboration with Cheree Berry reflects a continuing tradition.
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Specific Details Create Emotional Connection
A generic seasonal greeting can be lovely, but specific details give people something to remember. A favorite book, an unruly pet, a vacation snapshot, or a child’s eccentric costume says more about a family than matching pajamas alone.
That lesson applies far beyond celebrity mail. Families creating their own cards can borrow the underlying idea without commissioning custom portraits or launching publishing companies before Thanksgiving. A card might feature children’s drawings, favorite recipes, meaningful places, memorable quotes from the year, or objects connected to family hobbies.
The objective is not to imitate Jenna’s design. It is to identify the story that belongs to your own household.
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How to Create a Meaningful Book-Themed Family Christmas Card
For readers inspired by the Hager family holiday card, a literary theme offers plenty of possibilities. Start by asking each person to choose a book that represented the year. The selections do not need to be impressive, serious, or approved by a university panel. A cookbook, comic, mystery novel, picture book, travel guide, or dog-eared fantasy epic can reveal genuine personality.
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Choose One Strong Visual Concept
Decide whether the card will use photography, illustration, collage, or a combination. A photograph of family members reading in different corners of the same room can feel cozy and natural. An illustration offers more control and can include pets that refuse to sit still for cameras.
Connect the Image and Message
Use wording that supports the visual idea. Phrases involving chapters, stories, plot twists, happy endings, or new beginnings work naturally with books. Keep the message short enough to read quickly. A holiday card is not the location for the director’s cut of the family newsletter.
Leave Room for Real Life
Perfect styling is optional. Personality is essential. A crooked stack of books, a child reading upside down, or a cat sitting directly on the chosen novel may become the detail recipients love most.
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The Broader Message Behind the Card
The popularity of Jenna’s 2025 family Christmas card also reflects a wider desire for holiday content that feels sincere. Audiences see countless polished seasonal campaigns every December. A card becomes more engaging when it offers warmth, humor, and a recognizable point of view rather than simply presenting perfection.
Books were especially effective symbols because they suggest attention and time. Reading requires someone to slow down, enter another perspective, and stay with a story. Those ideas match Jenna’s publicly stated holiday goal of being more present with her family instead of spending every gathering rushing between tasks.
The card’s wish for joyful hearts and story-filled shelves therefore feels connected to the way she has described the season: less pressure, more presence, and more time with the people who matter.
Related Experiences: Why This Card Feels So Familiar
Part of the reaction to Jenna Bush Hager’s 2025 Christmas card comes from an experience shared by many families: the annual attempt to summarize an entire year on one small piece of paper. It sounds easy until someone tries to do it. Which photograph should be used? Should the message be funny or sentimental? Must everyone wear the same color? Will the children cooperate? Has the family pet ever cooperated with anything?
The Hager card feels relatable because it recognizes that a family cannot be reduced to one flawless pose. People are more interesting when they are doing something they love. By showing each person with a book, the illustration gives every family member a small role in the larger story. Recipients are not simply looking at five smiling people; they are being invited to notice what makes those people distinct.
Families often experience a similar emotional shift when they look through old holiday cards. At the time, choosing a photograph may have felt like another December chore squeezed between shopping, school events, travel arrangements, and the annual discovery that string lights have somehow tied themselves into a nautical knot. Years later, those cards become records of hairstyles, missing teeth, new pets, favorite clothes, changing homes, and children who seemed impossibly small.
An illustrated card can deepen that keepsake quality. It preserves more than appearances. It captures interests. Imagine opening a box ten years later and seeing that one child was obsessed with superheroes, another loved horse stories, and a third carried the same battered picture book everywhere. Those details can summon a period of family life more vividly than a perfect studio background.
The public response also demonstrates the pleasure of receiving something that appears thoughtfully made. Digital greetings are efficient, but physical holiday mail asks the recipient to pause. Someone opens the envelope, turns the card over, studies the picture, reads the message, and perhaps places it on a mantel or refrigerator. For a few moments, the sender occupies real space in the recipient’s home.
Jenna’s annual collaboration with a designer adds another relatable dimension: traditions become meaningful through repetition. The specific concept may change every year, but the process remains familiar. There is an idea, a conversation, a design, an envelope, and finally a card that marks where the family is at that moment.
That may be the most useful takeaway from the excitement surrounding the card. A memorable holiday greeting does not need to be the most expensive, elaborate, or fashionable item in the mailbox. It needs to feel connected to the people whose names appear at the bottom. The best cards create the experience of recognition. Recipients look at them and think, “Of course this is their card.”
For the Hagers in 2025, that recognition came through family, cats, vacation memories, publishing milestones, and a generous stack of books. For another household, it might come through gardening, baseball, baking, camping, music, or the toddler’s continuing campaign against pants. The subject matters less than the honesty behind it.
Conclusion
Fans cannot get over Jenna Bush Hager’s 2025 Christmas card because it accomplishes what the best holiday greetings are supposed to do: it captures a family at a particular moment and shares that moment with warmth.
The hand-drawn reading scene reflects Jenna’s lifelong connection to books, while the appearance of Conform quietly celebrates the first publication from Thousand Voices. The vacation photo keeps the presentation grounded, the children and cats bring personality, and the chapter-inspired wording ties everything together.
Most importantly, the card feels created rather than manufactured. It is polished, but it still has a heartbeat. In a season crowded with glitter, gift guides, and heroic attempts to locate the end of the tape roll, that authenticity is worth celebrating.
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Note: Family ages, card details and career references reflect publicly available information from the 2025 holiday season.
