Think back to a fond childhood moment — a walk with a parent along a wave-washed beach. The memory is happy and idealized, but tinged with the bittersweet knowledge you can never return. That complex feeling is nostalgia.
People feel nostalgia for lost youth, first love, or even eras they never lived through. The feeling often intensifies around the holidays. NPR’s Word of the Week looks at nostalgia’s origins and how it shifted from a 17th-century medical diagnosis to a 21st-century marketing tool.
It began with homesick soldiers. In the 1600s, Europe endured major conflicts and Switzerland supplied many mercenaries. Far from home, Swiss soldiers reported anxiety, irregular heartbeat, stomach pain and melancholy. In 1688 Alsatian medical student Johannes Hofer described these symptoms and attributed them to longing for the Swiss Alps, calling the condition heimwehe, or “home-woe.” Hofer coined the term nostalgia from the Latinized Greek nostos (“homecoming”) and algos (“pain”).
What Hofer described likely included symptoms we’d now associate with trauma and PTSD. Over time, however, nostalgia evolved from literal homesickness into a broader emotional longing for the past — often for a time rather than a place. Thomas Dodman, author of What Nostalgia Was, argues nostalgia is a modern emotion tied to capitalism and rapid social change: accelerating modernity leaves things behind, creating a new sense of loss and longing.
Marketers have learned to tap this powerful emotion. Vintage packaging, reissued consoles and retro merchandise are common because nostalgia creates deep emotional connections between brands and audiences. In times of insecurity, invoking nostalgia helps brands build trust and comfort.
Psychologist Krystine Batcho distinguishes personal nostalgia — yearning for one’s own lived past, like family outings — from historical nostalgia, a yearning for eras never experienced. Historical nostalgia appears in trends like the vinyl revival. At Ka-Chunk!! Records in Annapolis, Md., owner Matt Mona notes many customers are in their 20s, drawn to records they didn’t grow up with. For Mona, vinyl offers tactile interaction that digital music lacks: handling physical media creates memories in ways MP3s do not.
Nostalgia’s forms and uses have multiplied since Hofer’s time. Once a medical label for homesick soldiers, it’s now a widespread emotional force shaping culture, commerce and how we remember — or imagine — the past.
