What do New Year's resolutions have to do with a mythical two-faced deity, Babylonian farm equipment, and medieval chivalry? Read on for the fascinating history behind the promises we make to ourselves and others at the start of each year.
Some of our holidays — like Christmas, Halloween, and Easter — have explicitly Christian origins (in spite of what woke pseudo-historians like to claim). Other holidays, like New Year's Day, are practically as old as history itself. While calendars have changed from one culture and epoch to the next, each nation and people has heralded the start of their years with celebrations and vows to do better. And as my sister reminded me today, our New Year's resolution tradition can explicitly be traced back to ancient Rome.
The Babylonians were making vows to return borrowed farm equipment, pay debts, and crown their king at the beginning of their year as early as 2000 B.C., according to Farmer's Almanac, but since our calendar is based on the Romans' instead of the Babylonians', our New Year's traditions are more closely and definitely linked to the Roman practices. With the establishment of the Julian calendar in the first century B.C., January 1 became New Year's Day. And the month of January is named for a specific mythical god: Janus.
Janus had two faces, symbolizing how he looked back on the past simultaneously while looking forward to the future, thus uniting past, present, and future in one. This made him the perfect symbol of New Year's.
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Farmer's Almanac says that Romans traditionally offered sacrifices to Janus at New Year's and at the same time made vows of virtue and piety for the dawning year.
Janus was also the guardian of gates and doors. He presided over the temple of peace, where the doors were opened only during wartime. It was a place of safety where new beginnings and new resolutions could be forged.
If you think about the land and the seasons, the timing of early January makes sense for most of Europe and for North America, too. The active harvest season has passed…New Year’s resolutions were also made in the Middle Ages. Medieval knights would renew their vow to chivalry by placing their hands on a peacock. The annual “Peacock Vow” would take place at the end of the year as a resolution to maintain their knightly values.
Farmer's Almanac founder Robert B. Thomas referred to the close of December and the start of January as a time “of leisure to farmers … to settle accounts with your neighbors … now having been industrious in the summer, you will have the felicity of retiring from the turbulence of the storm to the bosom of your family."
By the late 17th century, making resolutions at New Year's had become so ubiquitous that some people laughed about how many people broke theirs. There have been scoffers ever since. A Boston newspaper sourly sneered in 1813, "And yet, I believe there are multitudes of people, accustomed to receive injunctions of new year resolutions, who will sin all the month of December, with a serious determination of beginning the new year with new resolutions and new behavior, and with the full belief that they shall thus expiate and wipe away all their former faults."
Some people perhaps do that, but I think the nay-sayers are in the wrong here. It is valuable to make New Year's resolutions even if we don't perfectly fulfill all of them throughout the entire year. There's nothing like a cultural phenomenon or holiday to galvanize people into action, and so long as our resolutions are reasonable and useful instead of extravagant and fantastical, what better time to make them than New Year's?
New Year's resolutions were mostly religious in nature in the past, and in more modern times focused on physical or mental improvement. It is best, probably, to do a little of both — to make vows to our God and to our neighbors. And as the Romans rightly recognized, even if they were wrong about their "god" Janus's existence, we should make our resolutions with serious reflection on the past and hopeful plans for the future.
