If you have not made your New Year’s resolutions or are not ready to begin implementing them, you could claim to be following the ancient Roman lunar calendar. It had only ten months, ending in December (literally the tenth month), and began on March 1.

 

By Paul Hicks

If you have not made your New Year’s resolutions or are not ready to begin implementing them, you could claim to be following the ancient Roman lunar calendar. It had only ten months, ending in December (literally the tenth month), and began on March 1.

The calendar traditionally tracked public events and ceremonies tied to the agricultural seasons, so the early Romans had no need for an official schedule in winter. Around the year 700 BC, King Numa Pompilius (successor to the legendary Romulus) is said to have added two winter months, named January and February, because of the growing complexity of Roman life.

Many years passed (scholars differ on how long) before January was recognized as the first month of the Roman year, apparently because it came soon after the winter solstice and the reemergence of longer days of sunlight. Over time, the start of the official year when new consuls took office was also moved from March to January.

The Latin name for the month, Ianuarius, honored the ancient Roman god Janus (Ianus), whose name derived from the word for door (ianua) as did the word janitor, which originally meant door-keeper. Janus was the guardian deity of doors and gates, just as January was the entrance to each year.

In sculpture and paintings Janus was represented as a man with two faces. One looked forward and the other back, allowing him to review the past while contemplating the future. In some versions, one face is old and the other is young, similar to the depictions of Father Time with the infant New Year.

As the god who presided over the beginning and ending of everything, Janus was invoked at the start of all public and private ceremonies, even before Jupiter. He also represented human transitions from a primitive state to civilization, country to urban life, child to adult, peace to war.

Whether or not you have entered January without making any New Year’s resolutions, you might want to consider some of the following findings from a survey on New Year’s Resolutions made by the Opinion Corporation in 2008.

>Among Americans in the survey 45% usually, 17% infrequently, and 38% never make New Year’s resolutions.
>Only 8% are always successful in achieving their resolutions, while 24% never succeed.
>Of those who make one or more resolutions:

41% relate to self-improvement or education

38% relate to weight
34% relate to money
31% relate to relationships.

>It seems that younger people are more likely to achieve their resolutions:

 

39% of those in their twenties succeed regularly or frequently;
fewer than 15% of those over 50 succeed as well.

 

One of the most interesting of the survey findings was that those who achieve their resolutions every year are no happier than those who do not make resolutions at all or who are unsuccessful in achieving them.

With those findings in mind, all of my resolutions relate to self-improvement and education with their higher success ratio. Also, I have decided to make the following multi-year resolutions that should have a higher probability of success than if I had to achieve them in just one year:

 

I plan to visit (or revisit) most of the 936 sites selected by UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee as having outstanding universal value. Some, like the Classical Gardens of Suzhou in China or the Palaces and Parks of Potsdam and Berlin, I may actually visit in the coming years, and the rest I can virtually visit online at http://whc.unesco.org/en/list.

 

I have been to a number of our 396 national parks, some of which are on the World Heritage List, but there are lots more I would like to see, especially Yellowstone in winter. To help me achieve my goal, I can turn to the websites of the National Park Service (nps.gov/index.htm) and the National Park Conservation Association (npca.org).

>Museum-going recently became even more appealing when Google started a partnership with 17 major museums to offer virtual tours of their works of art. Many museum websites, such as the Louvre and the Metropolitan, give you a very good introduction to their collection and exhibits. However, Google’s Art Project brings both the art works and galleries up close and personal. You can even click on a work and create your own online collection of favorites (googleartproject.com).

I could go on, but there may not be enough years for me to complete all this education and self-improvement. One of the good aspects of this multi-year set of resolutions is that like Janus, it allows me to review and savor what I have done, as well as look forward to what lies ahead.