In decades past, the Christmas Seal campaign was as much a part of the holiday season as mistletoe and holly. Money raised from the sale of these decorative seals was used to combat tuberculosis, an infectious disease known as the "White Plague," so-called because those suffering from it often had a sallow complexion. | From Our Past page

Symptoms of tuberculosis (or TB, short for tubercle bacillus) include prolonged coughing with bloody sputum, fatigue and pleurisy (pain associated with breathing or coughing). The disease usually attacks the lungs, but can move to other parts of the body.

At its deadliest, tuberculosis killed 118 people in McLean County in a single year. There were 35 TB deaths in 1907, with hundreds of others suffering from the years-long wasting effects of the disease.

Selling Christmas Seals to fight the tuberculosis scourge originated in Denmark. In 1907, a struggling sanatorium in Delaware picked up the idea, raising $3,000 in the process. The following year, the American Red Cross and a national tuberculosis organization partnered on this novel fundraising idea, and soon everyone was decorating their envelopes with these colorful, holiday-themed stamps.

In January 1908, a group of forward-thinking Bloomington residents gathered in Jonathan H. Rowell's law office to organize what would become the privately funded, all-volunteer McLean County Anti-Tuberculosis Society (known later as the McLean County Tuberculosis Association). This group then turned its sights on Springfield, lobbying the state legislature to pass a tuberculosis act to give counties the power to establish tax-supported sanatoriums to care for TB patients.

Such legislation passed in the spring of 1909, though the anti-spending McLean County Board of Supervisors (the precursor to the County Board) initially balked at instituting a sanatorium tax. In the meantime, the local Christmas Seal campaign was the only source of revenue for TB programs.

Frustrated citizens finally managed to place the sanatorium tax question on the ballot, which passed in a November 1916 referendum by 56 percent to 44 percent.

In March 1917, McLean County spent $15,000 for 40 acres in what was then a stretch of rolling countryside northwest of Normal (today the site of Fairview Park, named for the sanatorium). The 34-bed facility, designed by Bloomington architect Arthur L. Pillsbury, opened in August 1919.

Initially, patients were given "fresh air treatments," which emphasized bed rest and open windows, even during the winter months (this was before antibiotics were used to successfully treat the disease). The outer walls of the sleeping rooms-two on the first floor and two on the second-consisted of a nearly continuous bank of windows. When the glass was lowered, the rooms took on the look and feel of porches. The ward rooms were not even heated until 1930-1931.

Even after the establishment of a county-operated sanatorium, the McLean County Tuberculosis Association continued to sell Christmas Seals to fund important TB programs like an outpatient clinic.

After World War II, the TB clinic moved from the sanatorium to the county tuberculosis association's downtown Bloomington office. Money from the sale of Christmas Seals enabled the association to purchase X-ray equipment, which made the diagnosis of the disease much easier. Later on, the association operated a mobile X-ray unit so they could travel to area schools.

Although Fairview Sanatorium closed in August 1965, the McLean County Tuberculosis Association kept the Christmas Seal tradition alive.

In 1973, the National Tuberculosis Association changed its name to the American Lung Association. The newly named organization continued to sell Christmas Seals, though the money raised now helps combat a wide range of respiratory diseases.

Today, one can even use the Internet to send an electronic, or "eCard," version of a Christmas Seal.