Blame it on Babylon
Have you ever wondered where the idea for New Year’s Eve originated? Did the original party planners have as their goal to create a night of revelry where crowds of partygoers celebrated to excess, wore glitter tiaras, and blew endlessly on tinny-sounding paper horns?
My curiosity piqued, I decided to research the origins of New Year celebrations and discovered interesting details about four of the oldest known traditions: ancient Egypt (Wepet Renpet), ancient Babylon (Akitu), ancient Rome (Festival of Janus), and China’s Lunar New Year, which has been celebrated continuously for 3500 years! While Wepet Renpet in ancient Egypt began 5000 years ago, it is ancient Babylon that is credited as having the earliest recorded festivities (circa 2000 B.C.) to honor the new year, which included making new year’s resolutions. And for that reason, I chose Babylon to compare to the New Year’s Eve celebrations to which we have become accustomed.
One commonality shared among ancient cultures is that their festivals were a highly ritualistic blending of religion and mythology. The festival of Akitu was tied to the vernal equinox celebrated in the spring and represented a yearly cleansing of the earth by the gods. The celebrations lasted 12 days where there was drinking and feasting on traditional foods and ceremonial parades displaying statues of the deities. Rituals were performed to curry favor with the gods in the hope that the community would be rewarded with a bountiful harvest. As is our custom, the Babylonians made yearly resolutions, which usually involved promises to pay debts owed to the gods, the tax collector, friends, family, and neighbors. A failure to do so would anger the gods and the offender would not prosper. Click here to read more details about the Festival of Akitu, including the ritual where the king was humiliated to keep him faithful to his people and the deities.
Our New Year’s Eve celebrations are similar in respect to consuming copious amounts of food and libations but in contrast are secular not religious gatherings. (Although spend a few New Year’s Eves in Times Square and your opinion may differ. Since 1907 when the first ball dropped, experiencing the new year with hundreds of thousands of mostly strangers has often been called a “religious experience”). We also share with the Babylonians the idea that a new year is a cleanse of sorts, a time for the world and everyone in it to start anew. We all emerge like a phoenix from the fire and the chaos of this world to be renewed for another 12 months. Or maybe just a week. According to one article I read, 74% of resolution makers are still faithful to their goals at week one, however, overall, only 9-12% are successful 12 months later.
Like the ancient Babylonians, we faithfully write resolutions. But do you know who invented the phrase New Year’s resolutions? Would it surprise you to know that the term was introduced in an article “The Friday Lecture” in a Boston newspaper in 1813? As one observer commented, New Year’s resolutions were a good excuse to sin the entire month of December, just so you could atone 31 days later.
Not much has changed since the first resolutions were written. In 2023 we are likely to write a list that includes all or a few of the following: getting fit, losing weight, finding love, quitting a job/ landing a new job, putting finances in order, going to bed earlier, and running a half-marathon. We are hamsters on a wheel, in a never-ending cycle of self-improvement. We are obsessed with eliminating our bad habits, which often include smoking, drinking, eating carbs, and wasting time and money. As it is turns out, our list of resolutions differs by generation. Case in point. Baby Boomers resolve to get more sleep, eat right and exercise more, show gratitude, be more social, find a hobby, and check finances, while Millennials focus on being their authentic selves, selectively “unfollowing” people on social media, and fact checking fake news. They are also the most confident of all of the generations that they will keep their resolutions. If you are interested in more information about specific resolutions by generation, click here to reach the website, Bustle. I guarantee it will put a smile on your face.
To read current statistics about the success rate of resolutions from the recently compiled 2022 statistics, please click here to access a fun website, Discover Happy Habits. It is a beacon of positivity that keeps behavioral statistics.
Finally, I feel compelled to offer an apology to the learned scholars of ancient civilizations who may have read this blog. There was no way to capture thousands of years of history and research on one page, so I kept the discourse breezy and “tongue in cheek” in places. I resolve to do better in 2023.
Happy New Year,
Bernadette
This OperaBlog was contributed by Bernadette Snider, Vice President for Communications, Santa Fe Opera Guild Board of Directors, January 1, 2023.