‘New year, new me’ is the saying that goes around every year at around this time. The idea behind new year’s resolutions is pretty simple – to make yourself a better person come the new year,. Getting in better shape and eating healthier are pretty common ones. New year’s resolutions have been put into practice for a while now, but where and when did they originate?

New year’s resolutions started many years ago – in fact, they are thought to have started about 4,000 years ago, during the time of the Babylonians. They were also thought to have been the first group of people to actually celebrate the new year. It wasn’t the traditional New Year’s Eve celebration that we imagine, though. For one, we ring in the new year on January first, which is the start of a new calendar year. For them, the new year was actually in the middle of March, which was when crops was generally planted. During this time, they also made promises to their gods to pay their debts – this was their version of resolutions.

Rome was the first to start calling January first the beginning of the new year. For their resolutions, they made sacrifices and promises of good behavior for the next year. As Christianity came to play, it became tradition to reflect on past mistakes and make resolutions to to better in the coming year.

For resolutions now, we generally make promises to ourselves, or resolve to make ourselves better people instead of making promises to gods, but the idea behind the resolutions still remain the same. Happy New Year, and good luck with all of your new year’s resolutions!