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New Year Resolutions: We've been making and breaking them for 4,000 years and most of us can't even stick to them for a month. So, why exactly do we bother going through the resolution ritual every year, asks Jim Gilchrist, who also hears the best

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From: The Scotsman
Date: 20071231
Author:Jim Gilchrist

FILLING a bin bag with empty bottles, discharged party poppers and abandoned cardboard plates of trifle as your head throbs to the uncertain beat of a new year welcomed with ill-advised gusto is probably not the best foundation for any sort of resolve. The Hogmanay-Ne'erday debacle, however, remains our favourite and ever- optimistic launch pad for new sets of resolutions.

How many of these ritualised best intentions actually attain lift off, never mind achieving lasting and meaningful orbit, remains questionable. It was Samuel Butler, the 18th-century English satirist who observed that: ...

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