Absolute Resolutions

Ah New Years. A holiday of fresh beginnings, second chances, and listing everything wrong with you so you can arbitrarily pick one to work on throughout the year. New years to me doesn't really mean a whole lot, other than trying to remember to put "07" instead of "06" on my checks. Typically, this lasts until april or so. That's when the "07" really starts to kick in and establish some ground for itself. So, where did this tradition come from?

As it turns out, New Years is the oldest known holiday ever recorded, started by the Babilonians about 4,000bc, because they liked to eat. You see, since they liked to eat, often times to stay alive, early civilizations leaned toward agriculture as a means to produce food in large quantities. They became dependent on it, ergo they celebrated the start of the time when they could plant again. From there, New Years went from being a time of replanting to a time of rebirth.

As you may know, January first has absolutly no agricultural significance. But, as you may not know, it wasn't America who screwed that one up. You see, as people moved into cities and evolved specialized systems of labor other than agriculture, the mass of people didn't need to celebrate New Years when the planting began. The world changed and nations took over other nations until finally Rome stepped on the scene. Different Emperors continually changed New Years to suit them until the senate, sick of all the crap, finally chose January first to be the official date of New Years. The was finalized by Julius Ceasar, before he was knifed to death by an angry mob (not over New Years, though).

Actually, even New Years resolutions can be traced back to the Babylonians, the most popular of those being "returning borrowed farming equiptment". I've never really been the type to make New Years resolutions. If anything, I like to take a day and not listen to the mantra of all my faults and shortcomings. So, I usually wind up making up something easily attainable or completely irrelevant to my life.

...actually, "returning borrowed farming equiptment" is looking pretty good right about now. To my knowledge, I don't believe I've ever borrowed anyone's farming equiptment, and already attaining my yearly goal on the first day makes me a winner. To all those out there trying to lose weight or quite smoking: stick that in your pipe (or chalupa), suckers!

...although, at least those people are actively trying to make their lives better. Using New Years as an excuse is as good as any, I suppose. Perhaps I need to rethink this...

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