New Year’s resolutions

Every January 1, millions of people make New Year’s resolutions—to go to the gym, eat healthier, stop smoking, spend more time with family, save money, or do something else deemed virtuous and worthy of attention. As the joke goes, those resolutions are often left on the curb with spent holiday decor by mid-January.

Early evidence of New Year’s resolutions has been found on tablets inscribed some 2,600 years ago in Babylon. (Babylon, one of the most famous cities of antiquity, was the capital of the southern Mesopotamia area of Babylonia; the latter was first settled about 4000 bce and was situated near modern-day Baghdad, Iraq.) Babylonian kings offered resolutions in the form of a “negative confession”—a list of sins one has not committed that can serve as a pledge to continue avoiding those sins; the kings would kneel and recite these confessions as part of a rite of humiliation and purification during the spring festival of Akitu. According to biblical scholar Walter Harrelson, the festival and rituals “mark[ed] the rebirth of nature, the reestablishment of the kingship by divine authority, and the securing of the life and destiny of the people for the coming year.” [1] [2] [3]

Sam Mirelman, a professor of Mesopotamian studies at the University of Geneva, offers the following translation of the negative confession given by kings of Babylonia:

[I did not s]in, Lord of the Lands. I was not neglectful of your divinity. [I did not des]troy Babylon, I have not commanded its dispersal, I did not make Esaĝil tremble, I did not treat its rites with contempt, I did not strike the cheek of the kidinnu citizens, I did not humiliate them, I did [not]…to Babylon, I did not destroy its outer walls. [2]

The Babylonian New Year’s celebrations took place at the time of the first new moon after the vernal (spring) equinox (about what is now March). By 45 bce, with the creation of the Julian calendar, the Romans had officially moved New Year’s celebrations to January 1. According to Candida Moss, a historian at the University of Birmingham in England, the Romans added practical “traditions focused on starting the year on the right foot: cleaning homes, stocking the pantry, paying off debts, and returning borrowed items.” [2] [3] [4] [5]

In fact, the Romans named the month of January after one its gods associated with the new year and the making of resolutions. “On 1 January, our Roman ancestors celebrated Janus, the god of new beginnings who had two faces—one looking into the past and another looking to the future,” explains classicist Richard Alston; the face looking back represented memory and experience, the other looking forward reflected hope and anticipation. “New Year’s Day offered all Roman citizens an opportunity to reflect on the past and look to the year ahead. People would exchange sweet fruits and honey, greet each other with blessings for the coming year and the courts only worked in the mornings, so they had a half day holiday.” (Ancient Romans celebrated Janus on several days, on January 1 to mark the new year, on January 9 during the religious festival of Agonalia honoring gods, and throughout the entire month of January named and dedicated to him.)[17]

This tradition of making pledges for the new year continued through the centuries and filtered through various cultures and religions, arriving in colonial America with the Puritans, who had “a desire to avoid debauchery and reflect on the passing and coming years,” says Moss. “This period marked the emergence of resolutions in a modern sense.” By the 19th century, New Year’s resolutions had become the secular practice we know today. [3]

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Discussion questions

1. Is making New Year’s resolutions helpful? Why or why not?
2. Do you make New Year’s resolutions? If yes, what kinds of resolutions, and do you keep them? If no, why not?
3. Consider how you set goals for yourself throughout the year. How could that experience with goal-setting improve your chances of success with New Year’s resolutions?
4. What questions do you have after reading the debate above? Where might you find answers?
5. What was the most interesting thing you learned from this debate?
6. Consider how you felt about the issue before reading this article. After reading the pros and cons on this topic, has your thinking changed? How and why?. If your thoughts have not changed, explain how and why you better understand the other side of the debate.
7. Push for the position and policies you support by writing local officials, U.S. senators and representatives, or other people in a position to make the change you champion.