Pastor Devin Strong, Spirit of Peace Lutheran Church.

New Year’s Eve will be our next big celebration. During these last few days of 2021, I’ve been thinking about how much we desperately need touch points in our lives — markers that remind us to stop and reflect. Isn’t it interesting that turnover days like birthdays and New Year’s cause us to both celebrate what’s been and contemplate new beginnings?

One thing I’ve always struggled with is the way in which we celebrate and contemplate New Year’s Eve in our culture.

And, to be honest, it strikes me as the world’s most ungracious holiday! After celebrating the night before, most of us feel compelled to make resolutions “to do and be better” starting Jan. 1, then struggle all year to achieve our lofty goals and slowly grow disappointed if we don’t. Doesn’t that seem absolutely opposite of what we talked about throughout the season of Christmas? Christmas morning, we rejoice over God coming to us as a gift of grace, then – within one short week – we make grim determinations to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps!

According to Google, the top three resolutions made in 2021 were: to exercise, lose weight and get organized, in that order. (My guess is they’ll be pretty much the same in 2022.) During the first week, 75 percent of folks felt like they were keeping their resolutions.

After a month, the percentage dropped to 71 percent then, after six months, 46 percent were still keeping their resolutions, which is actually a higher percentage than I expected.

Though it’s also possible that the people interviewed were less than honest with the interviewer and/or or themselves.

I understand our need to put a period at the end of a year and declare we’re moving forward after that point. But where did this end-of-year celebration originally come from? Julius Caesar started the New Year’s Eve celebration on Dec.31 in honor of the Roman god Janus (hence the name January) who had two faces, one facing backward and one facing forward, signifying transitions and, in the case of New Year’s Eve, advising mere mortals to carefully look back at the year that’s been and forward to the year to come. However, most of us only tend to look forward with proclamations like, “I want to be thinner, more organized, etc., in the coming year,” when maybe we also need to look backward over the last year and acknowledge what we’ve done well. What’s worth remembering and celebrating from 2021? Perhaps we’ll enjoy a more fruitful new year if we build it on our strengths, rather than on conquering our weaknesses. Beating ourselves up to reach goals won’t make us any better at achieving them this year than it did last year. You’ve heard the old joke, “I resolve to lose 10 pounds this year, and I’m only 12 behind!” If we allow New Year’s to be just about what we have to do to improve ourselves, it becomes an almost “anti-grace” and “anti-forgiving” holiday.

When contemplating how we want 2022 to look, let’s remember that – more than anything else — what God wants is for us to forgive ourselves and each other, and live joyfully in the present!