20th-Century Postcard Craze

“For a few years in the early 20th century, billions of postcards flowed through the mail, and billions more were bought and put into albums and boxes,” writes Daniel Gifford, author of American Holiday Postcards 1905–1915. “And amid that prodigious output, holiday postcards were one of the most popular types, with Christmas reigning supreme.” Below, Gifford shares a small sampling from his personal collection of early 20th-century holiday postcards.

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Read more about the “Golden Age of Postcards” by Daniel Gifford in our November/December 2016 issue.