Changes

The tradition of New Years Year's resolutions continued to be religious for some, particularly Protestant denominations in Western societies, who often would write down their resolutions and periodically check to see they fulfilled them during the year. More recent studies have shown that countries tend to have different types of focus when it comes to making resolutions. In India, it is more common to wish for a prosperous future or better career prospects.  In the United States and Egypt, health was the most common resolution, where both countries struggle with obesity. Australia and Japan focused on love or finding a soulmate. In Russia, it was common for individuals to wish for a successful education for their children or others. For many others, having good finances were was the most common, in many ways similar to the first New Year resolution known to us from Babylonia, which emphasized getting out of debts. A more recent study using Twitter showed that the top online resolutions were: diet and exercise, reading more, learning something new, saving money, be nicer, get a better job, giving to charity, drinking less, sleeping more, and making new friends.<ref>For a recent study on using social media to know what resolutions people make, see: Zhu, Dandan, Yusuke Fukazawa, Eleftherios Karapetsas, and Jun Ota. 2012. “Long-Term Goal Discovery in the Twitter Posts through the Word-Pair LDA Model.” In <i>Advances in Natural Language Processing</i>, edited by Hitoshi Isahara and Kyoko Kanzaki, 7614:262–67. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-33983-7_26.</ref>

New Year 's resolutions seem appear to be very ancient and most of the recorded history associates it with religious behaviour behavior or trying to become a better person, invoking God or the gods in helping one achieve their goals. By the 19th century, New Year resolutions that were secular became increasingly common, with familiar ones, such as losing weight, as being one of the goals. Throughout history, it was common for people to struggle to keep their resolutions, with people often sliding back into their old habits. Nevertheless, New Year 's resolutions have been remarkably consistent, often focusing on behaviour behavior and trying to improve one selfoneself. Reflection but looking forward, as symbolized by Janus, are is also true in many cultures and has persisted until today.

<references/> [[Category:Wikis]] [[Category:Holiday History]][[Category:European History]] [[Category:Ancient History]]