Despite the obsolescence of nation states as 'survival units' (Elias, 2010 [1987]), children seem very early accustomed to the normality of a world divided into nations. This paper aims at discussing how Elias's historical sociology may be used in order to investigate young children's socialisation to what the social psychologist and social scientist Michael Billig (1995) calls 'banal nationalism', referring to Hannah Arendt's 'banality of evil'. While many studies exist on school curricula-and first of all on the teaching of history-few has been about the family. If it proves methodologically more difficult, investigating the family however seems unavoidable when dealing with primary political socialisation. Elias and Billig have both noted the naturalization and inadequacy of the division of the world into nations. However, Billig considers that banal nationalism is a hegemonic and international ideology that imposed through mechanisms like flagging. Elias is more interested in the rooted character of the national habitus and his texts can contribute to deepening questions that Billig explored little, namely, where does nationalism come from and how 'its magic works'. In order to explore such questions, the paper first draws on Studies on the Germans (Elias, 2013 [1989]), Changes in the 'We-I' Balance (2010) and Involvement and Detachment (2007). In these texts, patriotism and nationalism are considered the two sides of the same coin. The same position can be found in Billig, who argues that banal nationalism constitutes the ground for extreme nationalism. To help explain how banal nationalism and the national habitus can be transmitted and reproduced in the family, the first among other figurations, a second corpus is used, which focuses on the transformations of the family and the role of emotions. It includes the essays on the 'civilisation of parents' (2008), where Elias puts forward the concept of 'love and learning relationships', through which children learn, among other things, to refer to themselves and their group(s) by situating themselves in relation to a number of other individuals and groups. This theoretical reflection accompanies an empirical study that aims to understand how nationalism is transmitted within the family. The study is presented next in this paper, based on 90 interviews conducted in the Bordeaux region of France with 30 families with at least one child aged 5-6 years. The enquiry is multidisciplinary but rooted in qualitative-experimental political sociology. Its first steps are invested here as an opportunity to reflect on the tensions between two theoretical and empirical perspectives, which have lost none of their relevance. Ultimately, the authors of this paper aim to develop and test the proposals of Elias and Billig in order to better understand and deconstruct the meaning of national fact, belief and myth, which have lost none of their dangerousness.