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.
But in 1918, World War I had just ended and many soldiers were headed home for the holidays to see family. And with the federal government less prominent than it is today, and the advent of the U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 1946 still decades away, states, and more so local municipalities, implemented varying restrictions across the country.
The second wave of the so-called Spanish flu spiked in the U.S. in November, but the pandemic was far from over, and a third wave would reach U.S.