The holidays are a time that bring about a strong feeling of nostalgia. With Easter having just come and gone, we are all reminded of this. Often bittersweet, holidays bring back memories that have long gone. It seems as we grow older our feelings of nostalgia grow stronger. We go through a significant amount of change as we grow and we often look back on the past when things were the same.
Nostalgia is defined as “a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one's life, to one's home or homeland, or to one's family and friends a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place or time.” Big corporations play on it and we see sentimental notes in all the advertising we see during the holidays. It makes sense that for most people, these feelings can come about strongly during the holidays. Everything looks better in hindsight. At least, I know it does for me. Many have long-standing traditions that they’ve done for years. The idea of the Easter Bunny or the familiar croon of “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…” probably bring back a host of memories to many people. But we know as we get older, things change.
With Easter just having passed, many of us were probably left remembering the old traditions we used to have. Many of us excitedly anticipated the Easter Bunny hopping to our doorstep and leaving us an Easter basket filled with goodies. As kids, we probably ran frantically to find the hidden Easter eggs and now that we’re older, we get to watch the little ones run around and relive our own memories of doing the same. When we were young, the holidays were a magical time. We were shielded from the real truth of every holiday season. The Easter Bunny was as real as chair as the furniture in our kitchen. To a child, Santa Clause lives in the North Pole, carefully watching your behavior deciding if you are naughty or nice.
The joy you felt waking up on Christmas morning when you were younger will probably never be the same. You still enjoy holiday dinner as much as you used to, but now you’re probably the one helping to cook it. You get to sit at the adult table that you always wondered about when you were little. As you grow, holidays aren’t really as magical as they used to be when you were young. We get locked into traditions and forget what the holidays are all about: being with loved ones. We want to hold on to that magical idea we had when we were younger, and we can. We just need to learn to cope with the fact that we will be making so many more of our own memories with new traditions that will be passed on to many more generations. The holidays may change, but we can still keep the magic, it's just a new kind of magic.
