By Natasha Barbolini

As the year draws to a close, most people start thinking about their New Year’s resolutions. It’s a good conversation starter at office Christmas parties. Of course, resolutions such as smoking, gorging on Christmas puddings or drinking a bit too much eggnog are only intended to be followed after the festive season ends and not during it. I mean, what fun would Christmas be without a little over-indulgence? Alas, by the second week of January all resolutions are either broken or forgotten and life resumes as normal, nose to the grindstone.

So why do we choose this time of the year to make changes in our lives? Is it simply a societal convention? Do we cling to the idea of making a fresh start? Most people accumulate regrets on a regular basis and so the idea of “wiping the slate clean” is desperately appealing to us. Or could it be perhaps because every year we don’t achieve as much as we should have, and resolving to do better makes us feel less guilty? Of course, not sticking to our resolutions afterward makes us feel even more guilty. However, its not surprising that most New Year’s resolutions fail. For some reason, we think that a month of partying and indulging, directly followed by all the stresses and pressures of work, is the best time to break a bad habit!

This is a prime example of how society can erect traditions which are in fact, completely illogical. The Romans were responsible for this particular one, naming January for Janus, the god of beginnings and the guardian of doors and entrances. He had two faces, one on the front of his head and one on the back, and so could look backward and forward at the same time. Thus, Janus represented looking back on the year that had passed, and looking forward to the new year. This is where the idea of New Year’s resolutions originated.

The Gregorian calendar celebrates New Year on January 1, but this is actually a completely arbitrary day, with no astronomical or agricultural significance. Late March (in the northern hemisphere) or Late September (in the southern hemisphere) would be far more appropriate days, as these occasions represent the beginning of spring, new life and the planting of crops. Indeed, the Romans as well as other cultures celebrated March 25 as the New Year up until 46BC. However, various Roman emperors could not resist tampering with the calendar, until it became hopelessly out of sync with the sun. Thus, Julius Caesar finally settled on January 1 in order to re-synchronize the calendar, and the Western world still celebrates it as New Year’s Day. Other cultures take the lunar calendar into account as well, so that the date of each new year varies. For example, the Chinese new year is decided by the first full moon after the sun enters Aquarius, and falls sometime between January 19 and February 21. However, New Year is always an occasion to be celebrated, with blessings and traditions to ensure luck in the coming year. 

Even though we know that New Year’s resolutions are in fact an antiquated tradition, with little hope of success, it seems that we just can’t stop ourselves from making them. In fact, they seem to reveal an interesting fact about human nature. Not only do we choose a path that we know will lead to failure, we do it again and again, and often relish in the failure itself, telling all our friends “And you know, I only got up at 4am to go jogging until January 3rd, then I just couldn’t be bothered anymore!”. In that sense, perhaps New Year’s resolutions are actually an excellent exposer of what is really fun and what is not in our lives. They make us realise that no matter how much we “should” do something, we should rather do what we love and who cares if it means a few extra kilos.