No…I’m not going to list my 2026 New Year’s Resolutions because, frankly, I never do. Why? My philosophy on resolutions or changes that need to be made in life is that they should never be limited to one arbitrary day of the year. However, I did want to learn more about the origins of New Year’s Resolutions, and here is what I found:

New Year’s resolutions can be traced back 4,000 years to ancient Babylon. Coincidentally, they were also the first recorded celebrations for the New Year. The difference was that the New Year began in mid-March, coinciding with the planting of crops. Specifically, there was a massive 12-day religious festival known as Akitu. During this festival, they crowned a new king or reaffirmed their loyalty to the reigning king. Additionally, they made promises (resolutions) to the gods to pay their debts and return any objects they had borrowed.
Similar to the Babylonians, in ancient Rome, after Julius Caesar changed the calendar and established January 1 as the beginning of the new year circa 46 B.C. The month of January was named for Janus, the two-faced god whose spirit inhabited doorways and arches. The Romans believed that Janus symbolically looked backwards into the previous year and ahead into the future; therefore, they offered sacrifices to Janus and made promises of good conduct for the coming year.
In medieval times, there was the “Vow of Peacock,” an end-of-Christmas-season feast where knights renewed their vows of chivalry by placing their hands on a peacock (yes, really).
One of the first written records includes a diary entry from English writer Anne Halkett, who wrote a list of Bible-inspired pledges on Jan. 2, 1671, titled “Resolutions.” Early Christians began treating the first day of the new year as an occasion to reflect on past mistakes and resolve to do and be better in the future.
In 1740, the English clergyman John Wesley, founder of Methodism, created the Covenant Renewal Service, most commonly held on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day. This evolved into a more spiritual celebration, in which congregants spend time praying and making resolutions for the coming year, a practice now popular within evangelical Protestant churches, especially African American denominations and congregations.
One of the first public records of the phrase “new year resolutions” was in a Boston newspaper in 1813.
In the early 1800s, John Quincy Adams, the sixth U.S. president, detailed spiritual reflections from the past year and wishes for the next one in diary entries.
Older research I found said that 45% of Americans make resolutions, with an 8% success rate. People must be adopting my philosophy, because a recent You.Gov survey indicates that only 31% now plan to make New Year’s Resolutions. I wonder how successful those 31% will be at following through.

I could say that I will read more in 2026, especially Sapphic literature, but why bother making that resolution when I already read several books a week! So maybe it would have been better to say I’ll encourage others to read more Sapphic literature, specifically my books or those from Affinity Rainbow Publications. Think about it, that would be an incredibly pleasurable resolution to follow through on! You know the drill, click the links below to follow through on this suggested resolution for 2026!