The Wonder Chronicles: 32

On New Year's R/evolutions

Art by @spaceinkshop

This is part of a running series. Read the previous Wonder Chronicle: On Sequins

When we were children, my brother and I liked to stay up past midnight on New Year’s Eve so that we could jokingly boast that we stayed up for a year.

What is it about the New Year that makes us so silly? As if overnight we can become someone else via the alchemy of resolutions.

Around 2000 BC, the Babylonians are said to have been the first people to mark the New Year with resolutions. For them, the year began not in January but in mid-March, when the crops were planted and they crowned a new king or reaffirmed their loyalty to the reigning king during a 12-day religious festival known as Akitu,