46
New Year. New Resolution(s). 2021 is finally over, and now we face the odd ritual of making our New Year’s Resolutions. Resolution = Res-o-lu-tion = a FIRM decision to do or not to do something. A New Year’s Resolution is a tradition most common in the western world in which a person resolves to continue or start good practices, change an undesired trait or behavior, accomplish a personal goal, or otherwise improve their life at the start of a new year. But New Year’s Resolutions didn’t start here. In fact, the world didn’t celebrate the beginning of the new year on the same day. There was no one, universally accepted calendar. Various cultures practiced the beginning of their new year based on their local beliefs and traditions. The Babylonians rang in their new year with an 11- day festival in what is now March. Ancient Egyptians celebrated the advent of their new calendar during the Nile River’s annual flood. In 46 B.C., the Roman emperor, Julius Caesar moved the first day of the new year to January 1 in honor of the Roman God of Beginnings, Janus. It wasn’t very popular and most cultures continued to follow their own calendars.
In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII decreed that January 1st would be the beginning of the new year with the Gregorian calendar which we honor today. The Babylonians are the ones that started the tradition of a New Year’s Resolution. They would celebrate and then make promises to the gods in hopes they would earn good favor in the coming new year. Their most popular “resolution” was to eliminate their debt. Sound familiar? The problem with many resolutions is that they are hard to keep and tend to fall by the wayside usually around mid - February. There are several reasons this happens to us every year: ~ We tend to make ridiculously long lists of resolutions, and then we are overwhelmed with our long list. ~ We tend to keep our resolutions a secret or fear of failure, and then no one checks up on us to help us stick to it. ~ We tend to pick things that we really don’t want to do. It’s either difficult, timeconsuming, expensive, or tedious.
