As the calendar flips over to a new year—which it will do soon— it’s natural to set aside time for reflection and self-assessment and, yes, resolving to be a better person. Recent research reveals that 45 percent of Americans routinely make New Year’s resolutions and (no surprise here) only about 8 percent successfully achieve them. Nevertheless, making New Year’s resolutions is a tradition that stretches back some 4,000 years.
The History Channel.com says that “the ancient Babylonians [were] the first people to make New Year’s resolutions. They were also the first to hold recorded celebrations in honor of the new year—though for them the year began not in January but in mid-March, when the crops were planted. During a massive 12-day religious festival…the Babylonians crowned a new king or reaffirmed their loyalty to the reigning king. They also made promises to the gods to pay their debts and return any objects they had borrowed. These promises could be considered the forerunners of our New Year’s resolutions. If the Babylonians kept to their word, their (pagan) gods would bestow favor on them for the coming year. If not, they would fall out of the gods’ favor—a place no one wanted to be.”
“A similar practice occurred in ancient Rome, after the reform-minded emperor Julius Caesar tinkered with the calendar and established January 1 as the beginning of the new year circa 46 B.C. Named for Janus, the two-faced god whose spirit inhabited doorways and arches, January had special significance for the Romans. Believing that Janus symbolically looked backwards into the previous year and ahead into the future, the Romans offered sacrifices to the deity and made promises of good conduct for the coming year.”
“For early Christians, the first day of the new year became the traditional occasion for thinking about one’s past mistakes and resolving to do and be better in the future.”
The first official documentation of the phrase "New Year resolution" appeared in an article in a Boston newspaper in 1813. The article also included a cynical note about people behaving abominably all December and then suddenly vowing to change.
So, as we barrel toward a new year, it goes to show no matter how advanced we think we are, we humans really don’t change all that much.
