To resolve or not: New Year promises and their critics

Making New Year’s resolutions is a tradition, of sorts, but a much maligned tradition through the years.

In 1908, the Lawrence Weekly World opined that any day would be good for a resolution but since New Year Resolutions were a custom, people should not be ‘laughed out of adopting one.’

“May be you will be able to keep them. At any rate, you will be better for trying.”

In 1916, the Mansfield Mirror In Mansfield, MO., pointed out that while it is fashionable to joke about resolutions, there’s no date better than Jan. 1, unless you do it on your birthday.

“A man who makes ten New Year’s resolutions, every one of them good, and breaks nine, is better off than if he made none at all.”

In the 1926, the Brooklyn Eagle (clipped by Newspapers.com) wrote that New Year customs have fallen on hard times, since customs used to be sensible and useful. In ancient England, everyone cleaned out their chimney. And, according to the paper, in China and Japan, everyone paid their debts.

But, in Paris, according to the Brooklyn paper, fashionable people drove their fashionable carriages throughout the city just for fun. Meanwhile, beggars fleeced everyone else.

Fortunately, the Brooklyn paper did find someone sensible to talk about resolutions. Chauncey Depew, an officer of the New York Central Railroad, said only two resolutions should be made:

“It would be a wise plan if a man and his wife should make some sort of pledge to each other every year — that’s a contract and I believe a good thing. And everybody on New Year’s Day ought to say that, ‘With God’s help, I will meet all obligations for the coming year in a way which He will approve.’

The new year always looks shiny and new, wrote Brooklyn columnist Mignon Rittenhouse almost 100 years ago, but watch out! Looks are deceptive and before you know it that unsoiled year is full of follies and foolishness.