Join the holiday postcard conversation!

This site was designed to bring together postcard collectors and postcard scholars. Through an interactive database and “readings” of holiday postcard images, the site encourages collaboration between people who love holiday postcards.

Postcards Whispered Here

Ever wondered why so many postcards feature flag-waving turkeys? Or Santas flying zeppelins? Or crazy Halloween rituals? Using the database found on this site, holiday postcard enthusiasts can add their favorite images to the Postcard Whisperer inventory. A gallery of whispers uses historical research to explain several of these images. The results can be surprising, exploring all kinds of unexpected history and moments from America's past.

Participate in the Scholarship

The Postcard Whisperer website is meant to be fun and even a little bit silly, but it also has a serious purpose. Dan Gifford, aka The Postcard Whisperer, is currently conducting the largest and most complete analysis of holiday postcard images ever done. A doctoral student in American history at George Mason University, Dan hopes that people will both enjoy holiday images as colorful reminders of the past AND as important artifacts from the early 20th century. But he needs images to do his job! By adding your images to the database, you can also contribute to scholarship that will be useful for years to come.

So What's On This Site?

Add and Search will take you the site's database, where you can upload your own favorite images into the Postcard Whisperer archives. These archives can be searched by others and the site will hopefully become a platform for enthusiasts of all kinds to share and enjoy holiday postcard images. The Postcard Whispers gallery offers a collection of eight permenant whispers that help demonstrate what the project is all about. For those interested in the research, the What's a Whisper page can answer many of your questions about the data behind the analysis. Over three years of research has gone into this project thus far, and here you can learn about the types of Americans that most enjoyed holiday postcards, and why certain images were more popular and meaningful than others. And finally you can learn more about--and contact--the Postcard Whisperer under the Bio and Contact page.

Thank you for visiting.