History Of New Year Resolutions

Well if you are anything like me you assumed that the New Year resolution originated with the mother of all hangovers  "I AINT NEVER DOING THAT AGAIN!"  - well it didn't. 

New Year's Day merrymaking began in Babylonia in March but was changed to January by the Romans - don't ask me why, prolly just for shits and giggles. However, this is where the New Year resolution was birthed. January is named after Janus, a two headed god who looked backwards into the "WTF was I thinking" years and into the "I am totally going to get skinny, stop drinking, and maybe take an art class" future years. 

So this god's atributes were adopted to the new year - durring the Republic the Romans tended to stick to pretty dull moral favors like: be good to others and that kind of thing - then shit got REAL boring when the Roman Empire adopted Christianity, moral intentions were replaced with fasting and prayer. But just when you though that this post was getting dull something called the  Feast of the Circumcision was adopted for the 1st of January.

Yeah you read that right (and I typed it right - which will be even more amazing to you if you read this blog regularly) :  Feast of the Circumcision. This is when Christians gathered round and had a big feast in celebration of the chopped off foreskin of JesusHChrist - too many dick munching jokes to compute!. Oddly enough this event became popular for all - not just Christians and replaced the worship of Janus. 

From there resolutions where ignored until as recent as the 17th century when Puritans went as far as to ban the word "January", preferring it to be called "the first month". However the Puritans also urged each other to reflect on the past and the future durring this time of year. Go figure.  These were enumerated as commitments to better employ their talents, treat their neighbors with charity, and avoid their habitual sins - which I assume lead to a lot of Puritans putting on the Carpenters, running a hot bath, and sharing that bath with an electrical appliance. 

American theologian Jonathan Edwards is widely credited with bring back the New Year resolution, however he didn't make his choices half cut on New Years Eve like the rest of us, he spend 2 years working on 70 vices he wanted to cut from his life. Some people are just over achievers.