Happy New Year!
Dear all
A Happy New Year to you all! I hope you had an enjoyable Christmas with family and friends.
It is traditional for us to think about personal goals at this time of year. In fact, New Year’s Resolutions have been around for around 4,000 years – the first record of people setting pledges for the year ahead were the Ancient Babylonians, albeit their New Year was in mid-March when crops were planted. It also seems to be the case that we inherited the concept of a 12-day festival from the Babylonians (in our case the Twelve Days of Christmas, in their case the festival of Akitu): during their ceremony, statues of Gods were paraded through the streets, and allegiance pledged to the reigning King, all in the belief that if they fulfilled their New Year promises the Gods would be kind to them.
The Roman New Year was also initially celebrated in the Spring (on the 15th – or the Ides – of March to be precise), to coincide with the time when Consuls started their term of office. It was also during the Roman period, however, that 1st January became the start of the New Year, when Julius Caesar declared it so, in honour of the god Janus, who famously had two faces – one to look back on the previous year, the other to look forward into the new year. Janus was also the protector of doors, thresholds, and transitions into new beginnings. At New Year, Romans would offer sacrifices to Janus and pledge renewed bonds to their fellow citizens, the Emperor, and the Gods, thus reinforcing the structures of the State.
While religion has continued to play a significant part in New Year’s resolutions for centuries, over the last 200 years, most people’s pledges to themselves have been more secular. They are often related to health, fitness, and financial goals and usually reflect the prevalent values of society at any given time.
They are also a good indicator of how things change – it is commonplace nowadays to see people pledging to read more books or get on their bikes more often. Indeed, many of us will have made one or more of these pledges over the past few days. However, in the 19th Century all of these things were at one time or another, frowned upon.
It will probably surprise you that reading – or at least reading too much – was at one point regarded as a bad thing to do. Some people worried that this would lead to ‘information overload’ and our brains wouldn’t be able to cope; others thought that reading novels would mean people would be less likely to read the Bible; while – reflecting attitudes towards women that were very much of the time – many men feared that reading would lead their wives to ‘risk novelty’ and their daughters to become criminals…
Others complained about the prevalence of people staring down at books on public transport, which seems remarkably similar to the problem of everyone being transfixed by their phones today: 
Bicycle riding was a newly popular form of transportation in the late 19th century, but as it became more accessible and popular, so it attracted criticism from some who thought it dangerous because bicycle riders would startle horses, and even bad for you as it might lead to everything from deformities of the spine, appendicitis, or even insanity! One army recruitment office even rejected applicants who were keen cyclists because it was assumed they would have a weakened ‘bicycle heart.’
As a keen reader and cyclist, I’m pleased that attitudes have changed completely, and am happy with my New Year’s Resolution to do more of both in 2025. I hope you have chosen your own list of goals for the year ahead and wish you well in your efforts to achieve them.
Have a great weekend.
Best wishes
Michael Bond
