Why Do We Make New Year’s Resolutions?

We were blessed to start another new year. 2020. Babies born in 2000 are young adults now. Anybody born in 1920, the beginning of the Roaring Twenties is looking at turning 100. My mom was born in 1920 and always said she wanted to live to be 100. She didn’t quite make it, but she had a good run toward it, missing it by six years. Time seems to go faster as I get older, but I’m thankful for each new year that has come my way. On some of those New Year’s Days, I’ve made a few resolutions to do better, be better, but most years I’ve let New Year’s Day slide past without making promises to myself that I probably won’t keep.

People who like to come up with statistics say that only around eight people out of a hundred actually keep their New Year’s resolutions for a full year. Maybe that’s because we have unrealistic expectations of our will power. Especially on that popular resolution to lose weight. I saw a quote that said, “My last year’s resolution was to lose 20 pounds by Christmas, only 30 to go.”

But why is making New Year’s resolutions such a popular idea? When I checked out the history of making resolutions on New Year’s Day, I discovered that the practice goes back thousands of years to the Babylonians. They were the first to leave records of how they celebrated a new year, except for them the year began in mid-March with the planting of new crops, not January.  At that celebration they promised to pay off debts and return borrowed items. Next up with New Year’s promises were the ancient Romans. In 46 B.C., Julius Caesar tinkered with the calendar and established January 1st as the beginning of the year. January was named for Janus, a two-faced god Romans believed inhabited doorways and arches, looking backward at the past year as well as forward into the new year. So they made promises of good conduct for the coming year.

Early Christians perhaps took the good from the Roman celebrations and made the first day of the new year a traditional time for thinking about one’s past mistakes and resolving to do and be better in the future. In 1740, the English clergyman John Wesley, founder of Methodism, created the Covenant Renewal Service, that was usually held on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day. These services were also called watch night services, where Christians gathered to read Scriptures, pray and sing hymns as an alternative to the raucous celebrations often held to welcome in a new year.

I have been to many church watch night celebrations since the Southern Gospel quartets my husband has sung in for more than forty years were often asked to help sing out the old year and sing in the new one.  It’s not a bad way to welcome a new year.

I used to also write in my journal every new year and make, if not resolutions, then goals about my writing. For some reason goals sound better than resolutions to me even though they are sort of the same thing. I feel goals can be adjusted throughout the year, perhaps each day while a resolution seems to be something you either keep or fail to keep.

I do like the resolutions on this 1915 postcard with its resolve for every morning of the New Year. So if one day I fail to make a habit of “holy silence” as it suggests, then I can renew my resolve the next morning.  I want to repel discouraging thoughts and cultivate cheerfulness. Those thoughts I am glad to resolve and do my best to keep throughout 2020.

Have you ever been to a watch night celebration at a church? 

Would you like to share a resolution (goal) you’re making for 2020? 

My writing  goal for 2020 is to finish my new book by the deadline date. To do that I need to resolve to write so many words a day.