This article was originally published in Psychology Today.
Key points
- Nostalgia has a net-positive effect on our psychological well-being.
- Nostalgia can help us navigate complexity and remind us of what we have already survived.
- Nostalgia brings the past forward to the present to help build a more fulfilling future.
The winter holiday season may be, as songs allege, the most wonderful time of the year. But it is also the most nostalgic time of the year.
As Charles Dickens portrayed it in A Christmas Carol, it’s when the past and future meet together in the present, a porous line separating the passing year from the new year about to begin.
