Nostalgia versus Homesickness

It's the Sunday before Christmas in Xaintrie. Nostalgia is in the air as we hear the  everlasting carols and christmas songs once again on the airwaves. We're more than 500 miles from 'home' (except that we've been able to avoid that expression for some years now. During the first two or three years, the word popped out without warning whenever we talked about the UK, but now it doesn't. At first, you don't notice it, then after a year or two you hear yourself say it and make a mental note to correct it. Finally it becomes automatically the epithet for what has been truly 'home' ever since we arrived over 8 years ago). Does that mean we're 'homesick'?

Personally, no. I don't think I could ever say that I've been homesick since moving to France. Or after moving anywhere in fact; I'm not the type. Nostalgia, however, is another thing altogether in my opinion. I've plenty of that when the opportunity to take a gentle reverie in the past arises. Christmas is particularly evocative of childhood and other earlier-

life memories and is already stirring dormant reminiscences of family gatherings (good and bad), meals and places. In three days' time we'll have the Nine lessons and Carols once again from the chapel of King's College, Cambridge; a key event in my Christmas evocation. Even if I miss the forecast, knowing that it is taking place paints a misty picture for me of the small back 'parlour' of my parents' house on a Christmas eve, grey sky outside the window dripping with the condensed breath of me, my parents and sisters as the coal fire in the grate bravely but barely manages to keep at bay the December dampness and cold just the other side of the window. The shiny brown bakelite wireless is on with the Cambridge choir in full song and I can smell mince pies.

This to me is nostalgia - an affection for the past, not a longing for it which is the true description of homesickness.

Interestingly, there is no French word equivalent for 'homesick', but 'nostalgie' is there all right. There is even a pop music radio station with that name; you can imagine the stuff they play.

Happy Christmas

Mapmaker