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Flu patients are tended to at a temporary hospital set up in 1918 at Fort Riley in Kansas. Previous Next
Friday, December 25, 2020 1:00 am
Editorial
Lessons of hope abound in look back at 1918 flu pandemic
We ve spent an unusual amount of time this year looking back more than a century, to 1918 and the nation s last deadly pandemic. There are lessons to be gleaned from what happened, but also reassurance: We ve been here before; we will withstand this trial.
A Christmas without all the traditions and without friends and family is not what anyone wants, but we re not the first generation to experience it. Historian Michael Bresalier, writing in the Guardian, noted the holiday in 1918 was the first in four years without a backdrop of war. Instead, the world was in the midst of the worst pandemic since the Black Death.
Christmas in a Pandemic: What Celebrations in 1918 Spanish Flu Looked Like
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2020 has been hard, and Covid-19 may have officially turned Grinch and stolen Christmas this year.
This, however, isn t the first Christmas humans are spending in isolation. It isn t even the first one in recent history. In December 1918, preparations for the first Christmas without war in four years took place in the midst of the worst pandemic since the Black Death.
The 1918-19 influenza, much like Covid-19, came in waves. The deadliest began in autumn, peaked in late November and continued through the first weeks of December. It struck hundreds of millions and killed tens of millions worldwide.
Americans celebrated Christmas over a century ago during the previous pandemic with some of the same concerns of the modern day, including considering whether to gather with loved ones and risk deadly infection.
Detroit s 1918 holiday season was fairly average. Ours won t be. Darcie Moran, Detroit Free Press
A mother, having lost her husband to the pandemic two weeks prior, found herself at the mercy of a Wayne County probate court on Christmas Eve, trying to get access to $680 in the bank for Christmas.
“Last Christmas my husband filled the stockings. I thought, maybe – ” she stopped short while addressing a court worker.
The woman wasn’t named in the Detroit Free Press’ Christmas Day newspaper in 1918, when her story first ran in a brief entry several pages in, while returning World War I soldiers relayed tales of female German gunners, aghast, on the front page. But a little over 100 years after influenza and pneumonia took her spouse, the woman’s story echoes in a different year of pandemic woes and economic concerns, even as the holidays are set to look starkly different.
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York, Pa. Dec. 3. The influenza is sweeping the county and closing the schools in all sections. It is the opinion of many physicians that it emanates directly from the county teachers’ institute held in York last week. … Reports are coming in from all sections of the county of teachers having the disease.
York, Pa., Dec. 8. The Red Lion schools will only be closed one day this year for the Christmas holidays. Heretofore it was customary to close the schools for 10 days. The board decided to close only one day this year in order to make up some of the time lost during the influenza epidemic.