They were nostalgic about an idealised Arcadian rural society, free from the dirt and squalor of the cities that the Industrial Age created (of course rural poverty could be just as grinding and crop failure meant starvation, not just higher prices)
It would seem to me from the tone of Cecil’s article in the Straight Dope volume that Stan Freberg’s record “Green Chri$tma$” would be appropriate…
This thread reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend in which I complained about the speedy ghouls of the Sarah Polley remake of “Dawn of the Dead.” I said they had nothing on the lumbering flesh eaters of the original movie. My friend remarked, “yeah, they don’t make zombies the way they used to.”
Back on topic, the Victorians were actually quite nostalgic–and sentimental–about Arthurian times, hence the popularity of Lord Tennyson’s “Idylls of the King.” And the Preraphaelite movement of course idealizes that simpler time before the Renaissance (often seen as the beginning of modern times).
I think yearning for a past Golden Age can’t be classified as nostalgia. What I would see as nostalgia is more along the lines of “Things were better in my youth/my father’s day”. I think the Victorian period is the earliest at which there was a general realization that significant change to one’s culture and environment was happening at such a rate that there was a real difference between the present and a period that you or someone you knew could personally remember.
I’d refer you to my cite of Johann Agricola above, who expresses exactly that idea in the 1500s:
“Nowadays, trading and bartering have brought our land to such a pass that a man, if he would save himself from ruin, is compelled to cheat, defraud, and lie to his neighbors, for he himself is deceived at every turn.”
Sounds like Nietzsche. 