Making New Year’s Resolutions and Breaking Them Is My Tradition

With the New Year, bringing in a new . . . well . . . glittery, more optimistic me, I went ahead and did my due diligence of the New Year’s tradition: I made resolutions.

Yeah, I’m one of those people who makes New Year’s Resolutions, and sometimes I break them in March. Sometimes I break them in April. Sometimes, I forget entirely that I did it and bring my resolution mindset back in September when the weather is cold and I rediscovered the crumpled up resolution list in my coat pocket.

I make resolutions and fail, but I forgive myself all the way.

It’s a New Year’s tradition that I believe the New Year repackages us (or at least our spirits) into something brand new. We start off really strong going into the holidays. We like food, we love food. We go into Thanksgiving with empty stomachs and a no-holds-bar desire to just indulge, but then comes the guilt and the gym time and the salads until December, which is frankly too cold for salads.

Then once December hits, we’re starved, first denying ourselves the sugar cookies at the office and candy canes off the tree, before eating them while doing something else because working or wrapping gifts while we snack simultaneous gains and burns those calories right?

And then there are the presents, from the search, which feels promising until we go out into the crowded, public thoroughfares, to the credit card statements.

The holidays, as well meaning as they are, hurt us emotionally, psychologically, and financially. But New Year’s is the balm that fixes that.

There aren’t many familial traditions associated with New Year’s. It’s very much a party-however-the-heck-you-want sort of holiday. Glitter and sequins are optional but we act as if it’s as traditional to purchase as a tree.

So, yes, fine, I think of New Year’s as a repackaging of sorts. It puts me back in my Barbie box, fixes my doll hair from that impetuous short cut made with safety scissors, finds the teeny matching shoes for my perpetually arched feet, and takes all the marker off my face from playing Rambo in the jungle. Wire snap my arms to the cardboard back and slap that smile back on my face because I took a note from Jesus (his sequel on Easter, maybe not his origin story from Christmas) and am rebirthing myself with a to-do list that includes: be present, feel freely, forgive yourself often, try a lot. And maybe read Marie Kondo again and clean out that messy apartment.

The tradition of New Year’s is to keep trying. We just came off a sequence of holidays full of indulgence and family. New Year’s is one of those self-holidays where we distract ourselves with something shiny, drink something merry, and can’t wait to kickstart our new, improved selves by the stroke of midnight.

Some say it’s not really a healthy practice to perpetually promise, fail, and expect results. Some call it madness. I call it tradition.