Another New Year

History of New Years Resolutions

  • Topic: Winter Care
  • Author: Cindy Bellinger
  • Keywords: holiday, history, Other, christmas, holidays
  • Date: December 2004

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Here we go again. Only 2 more days until 2005. It’s another New Year.

And those darn New Year resolutions are upon us again. But get this. The early Babylonians’ most popular New Year resolution was to return borrowed farm equipment.

So. In keeping with that, I’ll need to give back the ladder a neighbor loaned me last fall. Then I’ll keep the same gardening resolution as I always do. Though it’s a bit difficult to imagine with frozen ground, I vow to create that luscious garden I always seem to have in mind.

But any kind of resolution—garden or otherwise—would make a lot more sense if we all still lived in Babylon. New Year celebrations 4,000 years ago took place with the first visible crescent of the moon following the Vernal Equinox, or the first day of spring.

A perfect time for New Years. Things are sprouting then, starting to bloom and baby animals are being born. Come spring there’s always that feeling of newness, the feeling that one can start afresh.

Even the early Romans continued to observe the new year in late March—until they began fooling around with the calendar. Then in 153 BC the senate declared January 1 to be the beginning of the new year. Typical politics. The day has no astronomical or agricultural significance at all.

And then if we compare our festivities with those of earlier times, ours definitely pale in comparison. The Babylonian new year celebration lasted eleven days, and no doubt the Romans had a good time too.

Now, however long you celebrate and whatever form it takes, have a Happy New Year.