In 46 B.C. E. Julius Caesar introduced a new, solar-based calendar.
The old calendar had become out of sync over the years.
This new Julian calendar began the new year with January 1.
Within the Roman world, January 1 would become the consistently observed start of the new year.
Sacrifices were made to Janus, gifts and visits were exchanged, along with masquerading and feasting.
Not everyone found this observance acceptable.
The early Catholic Church condemned the festivities as paganism.
“Participation in the ordinary New Year’s Day observances as well as in the Saturnalia of December was from the first discouraged by the Church. Christians were expected to spend the day in quiet meditation, reading of Scripture and acts of charity”.
During the Middle Ages, the Church remained opposed to celebrating New Years.
But as Christianity became more widespread, the early church began melding its religious observances and dates with other pagan celebrations of the day, and New Year’s Day was no exception.
As far as resolutions go, the ancient Babylonians are said to have been the first people to make New Year’s resolutions, some 4,000 years ago.
They were also the first to hold recorded celebrations in honor of the new year—though for them the year began not in January but in mid-March, when the crops were planted.
During a massive 12-day religious festival known as Akitu, the Babylonians crowned a new king or reaffirmed their loyalty to the reigning king.
They also made promises to the gods to pay their debts and return any objects they had borrowed.
These promises could be considered the beginnings of our New Year’s resolutions.
If the Babylonians kept to their word, their (pagan) gods would bestow favor on them for the coming year.
If not, they would fall out of the gods’ favor—and nobody wanted that.
In Rome, Janus, the two-faced god whose spirit inhabited doorways and arches, January had special significance for the Romans.
Believing that Janus symbolically looked backwards into the previous year and ahead into the future, the Romans offered sacrifices to the deity and made promises of good conduct for the coming year.
