Advent Day 21: Toy Trains and Nostalgia

Scotch tape and colorful paper will be flying off the shelves this weekend, as people face up to the task of wrapping gifts. How nice it is to remember one traditional present that needs no wrapping and, in fact, serves as a kind of decoration for the tree itself: the toy train!

Maerklin-Gueterzug - Pantoine (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Maerklin-Gueterzug – Pantoine (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Why are toy trains associated with Christmastime? Is it because they were for so long the quintessential gift every boy might hope for? Or is there more to it?

Toy trains go back nearly to the beginning of railroads. This long history is not surprising given that trains quickly became the cutting-edge form of transportation. Trains were the engines of progress. Growing cities were shaped by their palatial train stations. Songs, stories, poems, and, eventually, movies placed trains in their plots. In America, trains conquered the frontier, uniting the East and West Coasts.

What child wouldn’t want a miniature version of all this excitement?

A distinction grew between between toy trains (for playing) and model trains (finely crafted collectors’ items). The “locomotion” of toy trains was provided a number of ways, including wind-up mechanisms and steam, but as early as 1897, electric trains made their debut. In the 1890s, Märklin, a German manufacturer of doll-house accessories, capitalized on a basic marketing principle, namely, the purchase of a train would be followed by a desire for accessories: gates, lights, bridges, figures, even miniature trees.

In the United States, the Lionel Company of New York City was founded in 1900 by a first-generation American, Joshua Lionel Cowen, whose life was bound up with trains. Lionel fostered the idea that playing with trains helped prepare a child for adulthood. Major gifts of toys were saved for Christmastime, so the custom of finding a toy train under the tree developed naturally.

But what about now? Today’s kids aren’t begging Santa for toy trains, are they? Isn’t there an app for that?

Maybe not. Toy trains are still incredibly fun to play with. And they teach many of the same lessons today they did a hundred years ago: imagination, dexterity, patience. But adults seek them out at Christmastime for another reason. Nostalgia.

The word nostalgia isn’t so simple. At its core are two Greek roots: algos, “pain, grief, distress,” and nostos “homecoming.” Coined in a 1668 Swiss dissertation as a Latin version of the German term Heimweh (“Home-Woe”), doctors initially recognized nostalgia as a type of mental illness—a serious depression caused by inordinate longing. During the Civil War, nostalgia was identified as a threat to soldiers’ well-being.

Nostalgia became a sweeter, softer word only in the 1920s, in the aftermath of World War I. As society reeled from the destruction of an entire way of life, nostalgia came to mean a longing for things that could not be restored.

Could not be restored. It’s quite common for us to approach Christmas seeking the restoration of something that seems out of reach. We’ve also come to see old-fashioned toys as a way to counteract the impersonal edges of our multi-tasking society. Why else would we fall over ourselves to buy puzzles, dominos, and Raggedy Ann dolls in December? Old-fashioned toys promise the restoration of an idealized Christmas Past.

And some do help, especially items that take time to play. They require sitting around a table and doing something together . . . as a family. They give us permission to shut out the pressures of daily life and engage with one another. We should value those gifts that bring families together—board games, puzzles, even the pot-holder weaving kits.

But nostalgic toys can’t really restore that idealized Christmas Past. That is where Advent comes in? Advent has reminded us that our “homesickness” is not really for an idealized past, nor for things that cannot be restored. Rather, Advent gently proclaims that everything is restored and renewed in the promise in Christmas.

While far removed from a little train on a track, lines from a short poem by nineteenth-century poet and priest Gerald Manley Hopkins bespeak this sentiment powerfully:

Moonless darkness stands between.
Past, the Past, no more be seen!
But the Bethlehem-star may lead me
To the sight of Him Who freed me
From the self that I have been.*

So be prepared to treasure the gasp of delight when the little track is assembled, the wires connected, the lights flash, and the train runs its first circuit. Let us rejoice knowing that the fulfillment our hearts yearn for at Christmastime has not been lost in the past, but is always new and present.

*Cited in a marvelous book of poems and comments entitled Wild Bells: A Literary Advent by Missy Andrews, Rice, Washington: Center for Lit, 2017.

1 thought on “Advent Day 21: Toy Trains and Nostalgia”

  1. This season I have been longing for the past, remembering sweet times and loved ones that are no longer here. Thank you for reminding me of the love of our Creator and the hope of His promises.

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