New Year's Resolutions

Every December, millions of people greet the new year with hope and optimism. Major holidays like Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, and New Year’s Day all coincide this month, marking the end of the Gregorian calendar with diverse celebrations and well-loved holiday cheer. With high spirits, many people celebrate the beginning of a new year with a vow to make a change in their life. Unfortunately, such resolutions seem to have tragically short life expectancies. Making new year’s resolutions is a time-honored tradition notoriously prone to being sabotaged by an inexplicable yearly spike in memory-loss, mysteriously busy schedules, and “I swear I’ll start tomorrow”s.

And it is time-honored indeed—the very first known New Year’s resolutions are said to have been made by the ancient Babylonians about 4,000 years ago, who were also the first people to record their celebrations of the new year. During these celebrations, they would reinstate their loyalty to the king and make promises to the gods. Early Christians took the first day of the year to reflect upon past mistakes and make resolutions to change for the future. Today, New Year’s resolutions are no longer tied to religion and are mostly focused on self-improvement.

With that said, let’s take a look at some of Masterman’s New Year’s resolutions: