The ancient origins of New Year’s resolutions and how the tradition has changed

The prospect of rising from the fog of holiday hustle, bustle and feasts to contemplate how to do better next year is welcomed by many, and resented by others.

Near the end of every year, the prospect of rising from the fog of holiday hustle, bustle and feasts to contemplate how to do better next year is welcomed by many, ignored by some and resented by others.

The practice of making New Year’s resolutions may be done with optimistic intent. But usually by the second month of the year, about 64 per cent of those self-improvement hopefuls abandon their goals, perhaps leaving some to wonder, “Why do we even have this tradition in the first place?”

The answer, it turns out, traces back 3,000 to 4,000 years, to the ancient Babylonian festival of Akitu, celebrated in April, said Dr. Candida Moss, the Edward Cadbury Professor of Theology in the department of theology and religion at the University of Birmingham in England, via email.

The timing of the festival and beginning of the Babylonians’ new year — which also sometimes occurred in March, marking the start of the farming season — was based on the Babylonian calendar, said Dr. Louisa McKenzie, an art historian, journalist and associate fellow at the Warburg Institute in London, via email. The ancient city of Babylon was located in what’s now Iraq, roughly 88.5 kilometres south of Baghdad.

“Like many ancient New Year’s festivals, (Akitu) lauded creation and fertility on both an agricultural and cosmic scale,” Moss said. “The mythic origin of the feast was the creation of the world by the god Marduk. According to the myth called Enuma Elish, the world came into existence when Marduk slew his female rival Tiamat and created the heavens and earth out of her dismembered carcass.”

At the Akita festival, Moss added, people gathered to marvel at the wonders of creation and the victory of murderous, bloody order over chaos. It was also at this festival that Babylonians engaged in the first form of New Year’s resolutions, partly to placate temperamental gods — such as by vowing to pay off debts or by returning borrowed farm equipment.

Civilizations across the world have celebrated the turning of the year for millennia, McKenzie said. Although the Romans didn’t necessarily use the term resolutions, they tried to enter the new year with a positive mindset, as recorded by early first century texts such as the Roman poet Ovid's "Fasti" — a six-part account of the Roman year and its religious festivals.