Why We Feel Nostalgic During the Holidays

family holiday dinner — The holidays can bring nostalgia, an emotion with important benefits, according to a nostalgia expert.

(Image credit: Dmitriy Shironosov, Shutterstock)

Holidays bring holiday memories, and, often a sense of nostalgia for good times long gone, perhaps even loved ones long gone.

This bittersweet nostalgia helps us feel connected, both around the holidays and at other times. And, it can be a salve to those suffering through hard times, according to nostalgia expert Krystine Batcho, a professor of psychology at Le Moyne College in New York.

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It has been defined differently by different theorists over time. For instance, it was originally coined in 1688 by a medical physician as a term to indicate homesickness in young soldiers. He viewed homesickness as a physical illness experienced by soldiers away from home for the first time. Without email or telephones, being away from home for the first time was pretty traumatic for many young men. Homesickness was viewed as an illness that caused all kinds of interesting symptoms, even anorexia resulting from loss of appetite.

At a certain point, if there is something traumatic that occurs, a crisis, it could be anything from going off to war, immigration, a death in the family, whenever there is a major change it can be very helpful to kind of keep grounded in the sense of who you are. That sense of nostalgia helps to link you to your own personal past; it helps you remember who you have been. [10 Things You Didn't Know About You]

Right now, the consensus appears to be that the peak years for nostalgia might actually be early adulthood and the reason for that has to do with change and transition, because early adulthood is a very important psychological and developmental state where individuals figure out who they want to be. There is really a psychological assault on that sense of identity at that time — some people go off to college, some start their jobs, some get married, so there are a lot of significant changes, and it seems that nostalgia peaks around that time as a reaction to all the shifts, to all the transition.

They can do that in a number of important ways, we have been talking about continuity or grounding, one of the ways individuals ground themselves is in terms of who they are relative to other people. In other words, we define ourselves in terms of our relationships, in terms of how we are connected to other people, that helps us identify our sense of self, and nostalgia helps us maintain those connections and a sense of belonging. That is one of the primary benefits of personal nostalgia.

Now move onto the question, as you can tell everyone from advertising to marketing to religion, everything about the holidays centers around relationships. People want to travel home to be with relatives, people are more inclined to participate in religious traditions or cultural customs. So in a way, holidays bring together people when they cannot be together. Nostalgia is almost like a psychological substitute for the real thing, if you think about the song, "I'll Be Home for Christmas," that is almost the quintessential holiday nostalgia that helps to re-unite us across time and space.

For one thing, loneliness has been shown to be a trigger for heightened nostalgia. It is interesting because then the nostalgia helps someone feel connected again. It helps to decrease the negative feelings of being alone. When you are lonely, it is because you are separate from others in one way or another; and the holidays are really notorious for making people feel alone, even when they are not physically alone.

Absolutely, the most common definition of nostalgia today is that it's a bittersweet sentiment. The idea of bitter and sweet, that's what really captures why nostalgia is so special or unique. It is not just a happy-go-lucky feeling. Sometimes people confuse it with a warm-and-fuzzy feeling or looking through rose-colored glasses at the past, but actually it is more complicated than that, because the bitter part is knowing that the past is irretrievable, it will never be again, and that particular feeling is clearly negative. It is clearly a very bad feeling, but what rescues us from despair around the holidays or any other time is the sweet part.

Sometimes in the literature you will see people talk about a redemptive quality. There is a redemptive quality when you feel nostalgic about the past that can never be again, because you have learned lessons from it and they can give you hopes for the future and it can also give you a sense of self-worth or self-value. So, if someone feels separated or lonely or unhappy for whatever reasons, it could be they lost their job or they are physically ill or they lost someone they love, the emotion of nostalgia can remind someone that there was a better time in life, there was a time when you were successful or healthy or happy but most importantly there was a time when someone loved you for how you are.

That can be really psychologically helpful, because it reminds you your value doesn't depend on how much money you earn, whether you have a job or not, how healthy you are, any of those superficial things, all of which are important, but the most important thing was that someone loved you, it might have been your mother, father, sister, brother, wife, husband, whoever. We are talking about people in difficult or tough times, there was a time when they were loved by someone just for how they are.

When people are feeling happy, when you think about the party scene, then nostalgia can take on more of the sweet tones, when people start telling funny stories about the things that have happened, that is true at any age, you can even see it cross generational boundaries. At those family gatherings nostalgia is very likely, even when things are very happy, because when you have family coming together, you have let's say, a grandfather and grandmother telling stories about the past to grandchildren and that helps unite the family around a sense of connectedness, a sense of identity as a family and it's true that nostalgia-prone people, if we are now talking about it as a personality dimension, they are people for whom relationships are very important.

Wynne was a reporter at The Stamford Advocate. She has interned at Discover magazine and has freelanced for The New York Times and Scientific American's web site. She has a masters in journalism from Columbia University and a bachelor's degree in biology from the University of Utah.