Resolve to Better Yourself in 2015

A tradition of making New Year’s Resolutions goes back to the Roman Empire during the first century B.C. because of a god who had two faces. The mythical god Janus was depicted with one face looking to the past and another face looking to the future. He became the ancient symbol for resolutions at the beginning of each New Year.

The Romans believed Janus offered them a chance to redeem themselves of past transgressions if they promised to improve themselves during the eve of the upcoming New Year. Julius Caesar named January, the first month of his new 12-month calendar, after Janus in 46 B.C. Caesar’s calendar was very similar to the one most of the populated world uses now.

The custom of making resolutions for the New Year extended throughout the centuries as a way of starting off with a clean slate. People hope to use the first day of the year to improve themselves.

Typical New Year’s resolutions include losing weight, exercising more, and stopping a variety of bad habits such as smoking.

About 45 percent of Americans make New Year’s Resolutions. The University of Scranton in Pennsylvania, researched how often people keep their resolutions. These figures were published in the university’s “Journal of Clinical Psychology” on the first day of 2014. According to the study, the number of people who kept their resolutions for the first week was 75%. Past two weeks the number was 71%. Then the figures drop to 64% after one month and 46% after six months.

The university’s results seem completely contrary to reality. From what I've seen, most people stop keeping their resolutions after only one week. After one month the number of people still keeping their resolutions would be 15% at best. And after six months, forget about it.

Scranton’s clinical journal based at least part of the conclusions about keeping resolutions on interviews with test subjects. It’s human nature to give interviewers what they want to hear. So people who made the resolutions want to say they kept them to please the testers and keep their egos intact. That’s my opinion, anyway.

Kissing at the stroke of midnight on December 31st is a New Year custom unique to the United States. The custom derived from masked balls where disguised dancers supposedly didn’t know the identity of their masked partners. The masks symbolized evil spirits from the ending year. A kiss was the purification of the evil or bad luck from the old year into the new.

Follow the inspiration passed down by Janus from the ancient Romans. Make your best resolutions. Don’t worry if you don’t keep them, because you won’t.

Thanks for taking time to read this blog. Look at my website www.joevlatino.com to get information about my book of short stories “The Device.” It’s available from Amazon.