Is it going to be the losing weight or the quitting smoking
resolution this year?
If you’re like the rest of us overindulgent Americans I’m sure
you’ll be trying one or the other
– if you don’t smoke, you’re probably fat, and if you’re not fat
you’re probably a smoker.
Is it going to be the losing weight or the quitting smoking resolution this year?
If you’re like the rest of us overindulgent Americans I’m sure you’ll be trying one or the other – if you don’t smoke, you’re probably fat, and if you’re not fat you’re probably a smoker.
As for myself, I should probably do a little of both, but I won’t, and I’ll tell you why.
If I made a silly resolution I would most definitely cheat within a week, and then as I sat eating bon bons while smoking a pack of cigarettes I’d feel guilty about doing it, and I have plenty of guilt in my life already.
I’m a Catholic, you see, and we have to feel guilty about something at every second of every day or we’re going against our religion.
So while I’m not trying to break multi-year long ingrained habits of eating junk and smoking just because it’s the thing to do, you’ll be depraving yourself of something that makes your life more pleasurable and then feeling guilty about it when you cheat. Which you will.
And while you’re agonizing about the chocolate eclair you’re not supposed to eat, do you think it will cross your mind as to why we’re supposed to make these asinine resolutions in the first place?
I’ll tell you why, but first we have to go back a ways to why we celebrate the new year in the first place.
New Year’s celebrations are the oldest of all holidays, commencing with the ancient Babylonians in 2000 B.C. Their new year began around March 23 – the beginning of Spring, which makes perfect sense with the new life, new growth, new year theme.
So how did it change to January 1, which makes no sense being it’s the middle of winter and there’s no seasonal or agricultural significance?
After many years of temperamental rulers, despots and tyrants changing the calendar according to their own whims, the Romans decided to put their foot down and make one unvarying calendar.
January as the first month came from their god, Janus, the god of beginning.
While the Romans decided on a somewhat static calendar around 153 B.C., it wasn’t until 46 B.C., when Julius Caesar hired astronomers to help him devise the current calendar we use today that it was set firmly in place and hasn’t been changed since.
Resolutions go back to the Babylonians also. They used the start of the year to reflect on the past year and look ahead to a better, brighter more opportunistic new year.
They believed their actions on New Year’s Day would affect the outcome of their entire year, and that any bad habits they picked up in the past year should be broken starting with the new one.
The most common resolution in ancient Babylon was to return borrowed farm equipment.
Apparently the ancient Babylonians were raging partiers, because not only did they come up with a great excuse to party, they celebrated the new year for 11 days.
Can you imagine going to a New Year’s party that lasted for 11 days? Scary. Fun, but very scary.
Western civilization has only been reveling in the New Year for the past 400 years or so. That may seem like a long time, but it’s not when compared to those crazy Babylonians 4,000 years ago.
The delay was due in part to religious factions considering it a pagan celebration, especially, yep, you guessed it, the Catholic Church.
The Catholic Church is like your parents when you were a kid. If it’s your idea and it’s fun, they’re against it. And after years and years of other people doing it, they finally decide that it’s OK, but when they make that decision they have to pretend like it was their idea.
In 1582, Pope Gregory XII officially proclaimed that New Year’s would be celebrated January 1 of every year (great idea Greg, did you think that one up on your own or did you have help?), henceforth our yearly celebrations, resolutions and all the other traditional things we do to officially ring in the new year.
So if you’re one of those people who can’t allow themselves to break tradition and you absolutely have to make some ridiculous resolution, try making a resolution not to make ridiculous resolutions anymore.
If you want to quit smoking, stop for yourself because you want to be healthy, not because some ancient Babylonian made a resolution to give his neighbor his farm equipment back thousands of years ago.
You’ll probably have more luck in the long run, and you won’t have to sit around feeling guilty.
Laden with guilt is no way to welcome in 2004.
Erin Musgrave is a staff writer at the Free Lance. Her column appears every week.
