Traveling Back: Spanish Influenza almost stopped Christmas from coming

1918 was a hard year, not only for Door County but for the entire world. The war in Europe had been raging for four years, taking the lives of young men as they fought and died on foreign battlefields. Newspapers had regularly reported the losses and Door County had not been exempt from that sorrow.

Then the unexpected swept in like an ill wind, bringing with it a type of death that medical authorities were not prepared to fight. The Spanish Influenza taking the lives of the young and healthy in the faraway lands of Europe had moved quickly across the ocean and around the world.

The influenza devastated families. During the previous seven weeks, the sudden and fast-moving disease had hit the United States, and Prudential Insurance had paid out more civilian death claims than those of the war dead. With worldwide losses building toward 50 million, few families escaped being touched by death.

Doctors were stumped as to how people contracted the flu, but it was clear that being in contact with someone that was ill was dangerous and helped spread the deadly disease. To combat the influenza, it was decided to isolate the population. Local health departments ordered schools, play houses, dance halls, picture shows and other gathering places off limits. This included churches.

As autumn moved toward Thanksgiving, families kept away from houses of worship out of fear of getting sick. This was a hardship not only for the churches but the community of families that gathered during holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas.

These were times that churches decorated for Thanksgiving and quickly moved into Christmas. For Christians, church attendance was a way to worship the birth of Jesus. It would not seem like Christmas without getting together to worship. Churches would traditionally be gaily decorated in Christmas beauty in an attempt to capture the same sense of wonder and joy of Christmas night. Choir concerts, both in church and other gathering places, were also part of the observance of the most holy of holidays. Now it looked like they would not be taking place.

A darkness was settling in on the county and it was easy to see why. Between the losses in the war and the deaths caused by the Spanish flu, the community needed the comfort more than ever that only came through gathering with others and sharing one another’s pain and burdens.

Instead of a time of joy, lit candles, festively decorated trees, parties and the echo of holiday songs, silence reigned, born of the isolation forced by the contagion.

It was a gloomy time not only in Door County but in the world as the losses mounted up. Local papers continued to print the names of those lost to war as well as those that had fallen to the flu.

Was Christmas to be canceled just at the time that the community need it the most? What was to be done when the very gathering of people could cause them to contract the malady? Priest and pastors of all denominations felt the need to comfort their flocks, but their very presence could be bringing the illness right into the homes of their congregation members. It was early in December — a bleak and hard time full of sadness and isolation. What was to be done? Would this be the first time in Sturgeon Bay’s history that Christmas would not be celebrated?

The health officials and physicians also felt the burden of the self-imposed isolation. It felt like a dark blanket had settled over them, and to make matters worse, evening comes early in December, so the gloom of the outside more quickly matched the gloom on the inside.

It was on Dec. 20, 1918, five days away from Christmas, when Health Department officials and local doctors sat down and looked at the lists of those who had died the previous week from the Spanish flu. Quickly they saw that the death toll seemed to be receding. The list was shorter than it had been in the past seven weeks. Dare they, should they, ease the restrictions? Certainly they understood that the community needed the freedom and opportunity to gather together in an action that would lift spirits just in time for Christmas.

That was the day the Board of Health decided that influenza conditions had improved enough to rescind the order against closing businesses at 5 p.m. and lifted the ban of gatherings in churches. Picture shows, however, remained closed.

Within sight of the Christmas season, the church doors were opened and the bleak darkness that had covered them for seven weeks was pulled back. Families still grieved their losses, but finally they were no longer alone, and the churches swelled with the joyous music of the season once again. And really, how could anyone consider canceling Christmas?