BRYAN, Ohio — When the New England Confectionery Company filed for bankruptcy in Boston last spring, there was such an immediate and deep sense of loss across the country that folks took to local stores and Amazon to claim a piece of yet another what-used-to-be.
Necco Wafers, its signature product, had been part of Americana since before the Civil War. In fact, the company said the chalky wafers were a favorite of soldiers because the confection didn’t melt, so the sugary treats were consumed by Union soldiers on the battlefields here at home to the European theaters of both World Wars to today’s conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Also any Catholic kid of the ’60s will tell you it was their parish’s practice wafer for the least holy, most worldly part of preparation for First Holy Communion. I never liked them (my Dad adores them, in particular the licorice flavor). When I asked Sister Leo if I could pass on the wafer, she allowed it, but only after a lecture that included “you are not going to like the taste of the communion wafer much either, but you don’t get to pass on that.”
Go on Amazon today and the first two price points for a bag of Necco Wafers are over $60. Why? My guess is the nostalgia it evokes in us about a simpler or happier time in our lives.
Even if in those simpler or happier times everything around us was in truth chaotic, challenging, or even awful, maybe having that wafer reminds of respites we could find.
Nostalgia is a complicated emotion. Initially it raises our endorphins as we flash back and momentarily relive simpler, happier times in our lives or our communities. But it also evokes a deep sense of loss because those times and experiences will likely never return.
We are completely powerless to change that, and we know it.
One of the complications for many professionals who live in larger cities and communities who have made the decision to embrace our current culture of dramatic and rapid change with gusto is their refusal to listen to the people who sometimes want the world to slow down.
Nostalgia to them often simply means racism. Nostalgia to many others, though, means seeking something that was lost.
The more cosmopolitan class, caught up, living and enjoying societal and political upheaval, too often view those who aren’t on board — or who are more nostalgic for a more personally connected society — as less intelligent, too tied to the tenets of their faith, backwards, or bigoted.
These cosmopolitan views are not new to the Trump era. They have been building for years and went largely unnoticed — until their class lost a presidential election in 2016.
Why this rejection? The list of reasons is long. My Washington Examiner editor Tim Carney, in his riveting and important new book “Alienated America,” explores those deeper reasons and unearths the true losses that lie inside that nostalgia.
What cosmopolitan critics got wrong about nostalgia since this populism began was the assumption that it was rooted in racism. They firmly believed then, as they do now, that “Make America Great Again” was code for something nefarious.
Yes, some who were rallied by the MAGA promise were motivated by prejudice and vice — every political movement has its bad fellow travelers. But ask President Trump’s earliest supporters, and most of them would share a vision of making America great again rooted in a wholesome, inclusive vision of the American dream — a dream that was dead or dying for voters in blue-collar communities.
What Carney gets right is that our betters ignored the root of America’s angst. Some focused on purely economic decline, but the people living it knew it was cultural collapse. Carney’s book digs deeply into that collapse and outlines the decline of America’s blue-collar communities and religious and civic institutions that is fraying their bond to one other.
Nostalgia is a big part of America’s commerce. It plays a role in fashion and furniture. There is a reason we search for vintage clothing — many spend hours at flea markets or antique stores — and top-line courtiers look backward for retro designs.
It seems that half of eBay’s products are people looking for something that embodies a time that was.
And sometimes collective nostalgia has power. Here in this Northwest Ohio town 65 miles southwest of Toledo, the Spangler Candy Company, a fairly joyful candy company to visit, and home to Dum Dum lollipops, will begin production of Necco Wafers this year.
Spangler’s bought the Necco Wafer brand and Sweethearts, the iconic Valentine’s candy, last year. Both confections will be available beginning sometime this year.
