Billions of people across the globe anxiously wait for midnight on December 31 every year. This waiting takes the form of countdown to the New Year, and involves numerous activities. As part of the New Year celebrations, some people coin new greetings to signify a break from the past while taking their time to shop for New Year cards. On New Year’s Eve, many stay awake, opting instead to experience the last hours, minutes and seconds of the passing year. Given the global significance of the New Year celebrations, this is perhaps the busiest day of the year.

While some choose to hold huge street parties and other carnivals, others may mark the coming of a new year through prayer in places of worship, or in family activities.

Many Christians, for instance, prepare for the New Year celebrations by holding night long vigils during which they pray, dance, and generally praise God for the year passed, while hoping for blessings in the new year. This is in spite of Christianity’s earlier opposition to the New Year celebrations as pagan practices. Hindus, whose new year may not necessarily be marked on January 1, mark the occasion by showing respect to their elders and parents, while at the same time, seeking their blessings. They also give out gifts to each other that symbolise the good wishes they have for the New Year celebrations.

Many people also spend time in bars where they drink to the new year. Others take this opportunity to express affection to their loved ones at the stroke of midnight during a New Year party. This is normally done in public squares, where couples volunteer to be part of an annual New Year celebrations spectacle.

Many cities in the world host spectacular New Year celebrations. Sydney, Australia is one such place where such festivities are held. Sydney is known for its mammoth firework displays, where more than one and a half million people gather to witness the coming of the new year. The Filipinos celebrate with booming sounds, loud firecrackers and bamboo canons. The loud sounds, they believe, help to scare away demons, thus ensuring that the New Year celebrations are less troublesome, and the new year is blessed. Many countries and cities mark this fete by organising numerous sporting activities, such as Switzerland, where the final game of the ice hockey tournament takes place. In England, all the football leagues have an extra New Year’s Day fixture allocated for this day. In the United States, the “Tournament of Roses” is held, with partygoers watching from the streets.

New Year is also a time when many people remember the year’s achievements and failures, and look forward to the promise of a new year, of a new beginning. On New Year’s Day, when the singing, fireworks, and champagne toasts are over, many of us become more serious about life. We take stock and plan new courses of action to improve our lives. This is best seen in one of the most popular customs and the key to the meaning of New Year’s: Making resolutions.

It is found that on average, each person makes 1.8 New Year’s resolutions. From New York to Paris to Delhi to Sydney, interesting similarities arise, as shown in two very common resolutions: People wanting to be more attractive and healthier by losing weight, and exercising more, and smoking less. And also, they want to become better people in the year to come.

New Year’s Day is the most significant holiday, because it is the one where people evaluate their lives, and plan and resolve to take action. One dramatic example of taking resolutions seriously is the old European custom of: “What one does on this day one, will do for the rest of the year.” What unites this custom and the more common type of resolutions is that on the first day of the year people take their values more seriously.

Values are not only physical and external. They are also are psychological. Many New Year’s resolutions reveal that people want to better themselves by improving psychologically. For example, let’s look at our own resolutions over the years. Haven’t they included vows such as: Be more patient with your children, improve your self-esteem, and be more emotionally open with your husband? Such resolutions express the moral ambition of a person wanting to improve his/her self and life.

What then is the philosophical meaning of New Year’s resolutions? Every resolution one makes on this day, implies that we are in control of our self, that we are not a victim fated by circumstance, controlled by stars, or owned by luck, but that we are individuals who can make choices to change our own lives.

Then, what is the purpose of making such goals and resolutions? Why bother? Making New Year’s resolutions (and doing so even after failing last year’s), stresses that people want to be happy. On New Year’s Day, many people accept, often more implicitly than explicitly, that happiness comes from the achievement of values. That is why you resolve to be healthier, more ambitious, and more confident. You want to enjoy that sense of purpose, accomplishment and pleasure that one feels when achieving values. It is happiness that is the motor and purpose of one’s life. It is New Year’s, more than any other day, that makes the attainment of happiness more real and possible. This is the meaning of New Year’s Day, which explains why it is so psychologically important and significant to so many people throughout the world.

If people were to apply the value-achievement meaning of New Year’s Day explicitly and consistently 365 days each year, they would be happier, and the world would have been a better place to live in. So, let us fill our champagne glass of life to the brim with values every day this year, and drink deep to our life and the joy that it can hold.

Dharmaraj Joshi