Why do we make New Year's resolutions? A brief history of a long tradition

Are you aiming to sleep better, eat healthier, scroll less and/or generally upgrade your life starting on Jan. 1?

Join the club — it's several thousand years old.

New Year's resolutions are a key part of how many people observe the holiday, as much of an annual tradition as the Times Square ball drop or a midnight champagne toast.

The concept of taking stock and vowing to do better in the new year actually dates back centuries, though there wasn't always a pithy name for it.

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The word "resolution" entered English from Latin in the late 14th century, originally defined as the STEM-coded "process of reducing things into simpler forms." Over time, it broadened to more figurative meanings, like solving conflicts and remaining steadfast. By the 19th century, it had also come to signify an expression of intent — including for the year ahead.

One of the first appearances of the phrase "new year resolutions" was in a Boston newspaper in 1813, according to Merriam-Webster.

But diary entries show that people had been practicing the concept well before then — like English writer Anne Halkett, who wrote a list of Bible-inspired pledges on Jan. 2, 1671, titled "Resolutions."

Historians trace the phenomenon even farther back: to 2000 B.C., when Babylonians celebrated the new year with a 12-day springtime festival called Akitu. They marked the arrival of the farming season by crowning a new king, thanking deities for a bountiful harvest and, according to The Old Farmer's Almanac, resolving to return neighbors' borrowed agricultural equipment.

Alexis McCrossen, a history professor at Southern Methodist University whose research focuses on New Year's observances, says it was ancient Romans who first associated Jan. 1 with New Year's resolutions.

They celebrated the start of January by giving offerings to the month's namesake, Janus — the two-faced god of beginnings and endings — and auspicious gifts (like twigs from sacred trees) to their loved ones.

"It was a day to make promises and offerings," McCrossen says. "I think that's the origin of our New Year's resolution, because a resolution is a kind of promise."

Fireworks welcome the arrival of 2015 outside of Rome's ancient Colosseum. Ancient Romans celebrated Jan. 1 with religious offerings and gifts to loved ones.

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Other cultures and countries came to view the new year as a time for self-reflection and goal-setting, especially from a religious perspective.

There was the medieval "Vow of the Peacock," an end-of-Christmas-season feast where knights renewed their vows of chivalry by placing their hands on (you guessed it) a peacock. In well-documented diary entries from the early 1800s, John Quincy Adams, the sixth U.S. president, detailed spiritual reflections from the past year and wishes for the next one.

But it wasn't until the 20th century that Americans en masse began celebrating New Year's as a holiday, and making secular resolutions a part of it.

This installment of NPR's Word of the Week explores the evolution of New Year's resolutions — and what we can learn from that history as we set our intentions for the future.

New Year's was a "non-event" for much of U.S. history, but a reflective season

As McCrossen explains, Jan. 1 didn't hold special significance to most Americans until relatively recently.

That's partially because England and its colonies didn't start treating that day as the new year until they adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752. Before that, under the Julian calendar, the year began on March 25.

Even in ensuing decades, McCrossen says Jan. 1 was essentially "like any other day of the week," notable mostly because it was the beginning of the fiscal year. In hindsight, she says that was arguably its own kind of New Year's resolution: paying off debts and resolving to avoid them in the future.

Indeed, Robert Thomas, who founded The Old Farmer's Almanac in 1792, called the new year a time of "leisure to farmers … to settle accounts with your neighbors" after the frenzy of the fall harvest and winter holidays.

Jan. 1 was an increasingly popular day to do so. In the antebellum South, it came to be known as "Hiring Day" or "Heartbreak Day," a busy day for renewing contracts — including those of enslaved people — and tallying debts. Printers began to heavily advertise products like ledgers and account books specifically ahead of the new year.

"It's like buying the running shoes before you make the commitment that you're going to train for a marathon," McCrossen says. "There's an emphasis on preparing for the new year and doing it better than you had been."

By the early 19th century, more Americans were embracing the new year as a moment to take stock and set spiritual goals, which McCrossen attributes in large part to the growth of capitalism and Evangelicalism.

While the new year was largely still a "non-event," McCrossen says, people increasingly treated Jan. 1 as a day of visiting and socializing. New Yorkers held open houses; People in D.C. went to the White House to shake the president's hand.

It was around this time that Americans started becoming "more oriented toward festivities" like Christmas (first recognized as a federal holiday in 1870) and New Year's in general, McCrossen says.

"But I think if it had just remained a holiday for the first of the year … I don't know if we would have gotten resolutions," she adds. "I think the resolutions come with the emphasis on midnight … on the moment of the new year's arrival."

A couple toasts to New Year's as the clock strikes midnight on this German postcard from 1904. German immigrants are credited with helping popularize New Year's Eve celebrations in the U.S.

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She traces that shift to two main contributors.

One is the "Watch Night" services that Baptist, Methodist and other evangelical churches began to hold late on New Year's Eve, which tended to focus on shortcomings from the past year and promises for the next one. The preacher would announce the arrival of midnight, McCrossen says, "and there would be shouts of joy and gladness … and a sense of transformation."

The other is the influx of German immigrants, who brought with them "Silvesterabend" (or "Sylvester's Abend"), the tradition — named for an early pope and the German word for "evening" — of celebrating Dec. 31 with song, dance and midnight toasts. The practice was so unusual at the time that it warranted coverage in mainstream U.S. newspapers, she says — and inspired many non-evangelicals to follow suit.

"By the 20th century, we've got electricity, we've got the ball dropping in Times Square, we've got bells ringing, we've got midnight galore, and we have a lot of commercial forces that are trying to make money out of New Year's Eve," McCrossen says.

How our resolutions have changed

People run on treadmills at a New York Sports Club on Jan. 2, 2003 in Brooklyn, New York — perhaps as part of a New Year's resolution.

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The Times Square ball dropped for the first time in 1907 (though it wasn't accompanied by a countdown until many decades later) . Mentions of New Year's resolutions started appearing in U.S. newspapers around the same time.

In 1900, Georgia's Columbus Daily Enquirer spotlighted the "novel New Year's resolution" of an unnamed Columbus woman who "had resolved to stay at home more, and to go out more." A 1914 piece in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram surveyed several Texans about attempting New Year's resolutions.

"I don't remember keeping any one of a dozen I recall making," said one, Howard Higby.

"Never before until today. This is my last cigarette for a year," said another, Billie Moore. "See me Jan. 1, 1916 and ask me."

A 1918 piece in Michigan's Jackson City Patriot says World War I "has brought New Year resolutions back into fashion," and "not the old-style kinds that were readily made and readily broken." It urged Americans to resolve to help win the war by doing things like buying Liberty bonds and rationing food.

New Year's resolutions have largely lost their religious overtones, a development McCrossen says is in line with broader cultural trends. In recent decades, goals have turned more towards self-improvement.

A 1947 Gallup poll shared with NPR asked if people planned to make New Year's resolutions. For those who did, some of the most common answers will be recognizable to readers today: "improve my character, live [a] better life, be more independent," "be more efficient and prompt," "stop smoking" and "save more money."

But "get thin," "stop eating candy," and "get more sleep, take care of my health, not work so hard" ranked at the bottom of the list, in a sign of how times have changed.

These days, McCrossen believes everyone should try to make at least some New Year's reflections and resolutions, ideally informed by generations past. She especially likes the idea of bringing back Jan. 1 as a day to reconnect with others, whether that's through an in-person get together, a phone call or a handwritten note.

And she notes that — as has been the case throughout history — resolutions don't only have to be made on the eve of a new year.

"Each day, one could do that," she says. "It's just that the 1st provides us with a lot of energy and community, all of us together trying to start out on a new foot."
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