New Year’s Resolutions

New Years Day is the first day of the new year, and many people look forward to improving themselves in the year ahead. Several of the most popular New Year’s resolutions are: Exercise more and lose weight; Get organized; Learn a new skill; save more money or spend less money; quit smoking and/or drinking, and spend more time with family and friends.

The Cheyenne Daily News, January 1, 1875: New Year’s Day: To-day our people will celebrate the anniversary of a holiday of well-established interest. We are not required to enter into an elaborate or detailed history of the day and its customs; nor does our space permit us to do so. Enough to say that the day has of late years been characterized by reunions of friends and recollections of the events of the receding year, together with many good promises and pledges for the New Year.

Although we might think that the New Year’s resolutions are new, they are practically as old as time.

From the Encampment Echo on January 1,1920: Swearing off – Is said to have originated in the twelfth century with Louis IX of France, who decreed that on a certain New Year’s Day the soldiers of his army should take a vow to refrain from indulgence in strong drink for a whole year.

The practice of beginning the new year with good resolutions, however, is very, very old. The custom goes back to the beginnings of recorded history and was common to many peoples. Time was when the New Year’s resolution was a solemn affair, marked by elaborate religious ceremonies.

For example, the Japanese, 300 years before Christ, made much of the day. All outstanding accounts and debts were cleared away, all enmities were ended under penalty of the law. The dwelling house was swept and garnished; old furniture and old clothing were cast away in exchange for new in the belief that the assumption of a new conscience was complete only with the assumption of a new covering for the body.

By contemporary peoples was the New Year Day regarded as time of solemn renunciation of all follies and an amendment for the future. In the days of the Pharaohs the Egyptians symbolized their purification with elaborate baths and fasting.

With the passing of the centuries old New Year’s vows have lost their formal character. “Turning over a new leaf” is now a matter of individual and not a national concern. Nevertheless, the modern man is more sensitive to the appeal of the New Year than he shows in public. What makes the New Year Is the newness of life that human nature brings into it. It is a New Year to everybody according as everybody tries to live over again and pushes forward and turns plan to action and discouragement to hope.

This from the Sheridan Enterprise, January 5, 1914: A great deal used to be said at this time of year about keeping your good resolutions. It was assumed that of course you had to shut yourself up on New Year’s day and make a big list of them. This Turning Over a New Leaf it seemed to come from the opposite extremes of society. There were the people of refined and fervent conscience, who took a normal and spiritual inventory at regular intervals. They gritted their teeth January 1 and resolved to give Satan a better run for his money than he ever had before.

Then at the other extreme there were people of feeble wills, whom the thought of the freshly turned page of life seemed to impel to a new start. They felt the dead weight of past mistakes, which seemed to hold them down from any effort to climb.

The New Year gave them a chance for amendment, unhampered by this sense of failure. It was no doubt a real and helpful experience with some men, although more or less artificial. The trouble encountered was that the calendar has but little relation to the human spirit. Resolutions for better living are valuable and praise worthy whether made Jan. 1 or Aug. 31. Every day ought to be- a New Year. As the shams of life are penetrated by riper experience, every one ought to be a little wiser today than lie was yesterday. Obstacles that look impassible today, should seem less immovable tomorrow.

And, just because you look back on the old year and see that the resolutions you made in 2023 fell by the wayside, is no reason not to make new ones in 2024. For one thing, our lives change. Like a snake shedding its old skin. We cast off the old year and enter a bright new year. What may have loomed large in 2023, is largely forgotten in 2024, and new challenges take their place. When making resolutions, take small steps. Many people fail because they have unrealistic expectations. If one wants to lose weight, don’t go on an extreme diet, may resolve to eat a salad a day. Small step. Or even cutting back on smoking or drinking may be a positive change.

This from The Riverton Chronicle December 21, 1916 – Standing, as we are, upon the threshold of another year, many of us will, in fancy, go back over the twelve months that have passed and smile when we recall the “New Year resolutions” we made a year ago.

Well, forget last year’s good resolutions and forget the past year entirely. Turn with hope and confidence to the great new year about to dawn, and —yes. make new good resolutions, as many of them as your brain can conjure up. Perhaps you did fail to keep the good intentions that made you so happy when you thought them out, but remember you are very human.

Indeed, if we all were not so very human there would be absolutely no need of our ever making any kind of good resolutions. Many of us will see the old year go with few regrets. It brought us, perhaps, an extra share of cares and disappointments, but are we not all the better and stronger for them, and will not the lessons they taught us stand us in good stead during the coming days?

Dear friend, let me assure you that the difficulties and discouragements you surmounted during this still present year will without question make you a better and braver person.

Welcome the New Year; and by all means make new good resolutions. Every one of us needs to make them, because as I have said, we are all human. In the hearts of most of us is a wonder, a curiosity, as to what the coming year may bring to us, whether good fortune or bad, sorrow or joy.

Turning the New Leaf. From time immemorial It has been the custom of the fore-handed good old-fashioned neighbor to square up his accounts, make new resolves, start cutting off certain bad habits, and “turn over a new leaf.” This Is perfectly reasonable and natural. As the calendar lender marks n new cycle of time, so we instinctively pause and make ready for a fair new start in life, even though we know that neither life nor time has any pause in its onward sweep. We cannot make too many efforts to prune off bad habits and such other dead wood as we find in our lives each year. All who have no faults, please stand! However, It may be that the best New Year’s resolve we can make this first holiday of 1917 will be to start the good habit of beginning new every awning. After all the mistakes and disappointments and business battles that leave us tired and sour and sick, there comes a new day. so that we can begin over again and do better. If we start such a plan, the coming year and those following It will be happier new years.

And this interesting tidbit fromThe Elite Cheyenne, Monday, March 28, 1892

Why Christmas and New Years so Close Together? It is plain. The excesses of Christmas put the population in the humor of making good resolutions for the coming year, and it is necessary that New Year’s be close on hand, else they’d backslide before the resolutions were recorded.—Denver News.

So, make your New Year’s Resolutions this year, as the Riverton Chronicle quoted above said, make new good resolutions, as many of them as your brain can conjure up. Even if we, as human’s, don’t keep them all, perhaps we might keep one or two of them. It shows that we are actively wanting to improve our lives for the better, and it shows we have hope for the future. Happy 2024 everyone and may the New Year give you all your hopes and dreams.