As we rang through the New Year, many of us made New Year’s resolutions. This common practice happens because everyone seems to set goals that they want to achieve in the new year. “New year, new me,” am I right?
However, do we really know where resolutions originated from?
The origin of the New Year began with Babylonians, an ancient Akkadian-speaking group based in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq). They celebrated the New Year with a twelve-day festival in March, while ancient Egyptians celebrated their New Year during the annual flood of the Nile River. With no standardization of when the new year was to be celebrated, Julius Caesar moved the first day of the year to January 1st in the Julian calendar, in honour of Janus, the Roman God of beginnings. Then, in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII implemented this in the Gregorian calendar, which persists today.
Even though making resolutions seems to be more popular in the Western world, the tradition does follow through in the Eastern hemisphere as well. The ancient Babylonians used the New Year to make amends for any wrongs of the past year. In Ancient Rome, resolutions were made to be good to others. In the 17th century, Puritans (English Reformed Protestants) urged children to spend their time reflecting on the past year and thinking about the new year, avoiding sins, and treating their neighbors with charity. Since then, making resolutions has passed on and morphed into our modern day New Year’s tradition.
Our resolutions now focus more on self-improvement, such as losing weight, eating better, and saving money—differing slightly to what our Ancient ancestors would have done. To everyone that made resolutions this year, I hope you can achieve them. And if you’re still looking, here are a few resolutions and some tips on keeping them.