ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 31, 1995 TAG: 9601020013
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
COLUMN: Dispatches from Rye Hollow|
SOURCE: STEVE KARK
I generally don't place much stock in New Year's resolutions.
You see, resolve isn't one of my stronger traits. A grasshopper in a hen house has more chance than one of my New Year's resolutions.
One year I resolved to try to stop being such a procrastinator, but I kept putting it off. And later, after I resolved to remember and follow through on my intention, I forgot what I'd intended in the first place.
I've always been a bit puzzled by this tradition anyway. I have a hard time accepting that this particular night, the eve of a new year, should bestow some special charm to our efforts - as though this day, more than any other, offers new beginnings, new opportunities.
As I see it, one day is about as good as any other. There's as much chance that things will go smoothly as there is that your problems will creep up on you thicker'n fiddlers in hell.
Make a New Year's resolution in a moment of unguarded optimism tonight, and you're surely setting yourself up for a heavy burden of guilt when you come to your senses tomorrow.
If I feel obliged to make a resolution, I make it a little one - something I can live with. And even then I resolve to do it only if I can't find something better to do.
I take it a little at a time. Instead of making a New Year's resolution to clean the basement, I make one to clean only the workbench. Generally, the rest gets done anyway; but if it doesn't, I don't have to feel eaten up with guilt for not following through with my resolution.
A better strategy for dealing with this annoying tradition is to make your resolutions easy. For example, I might make a resolution to not eat liver, which I can't stand, or to not drink from the dog's water bowl. I shouldn't have any trouble following through on either one of these, unless I'm terribly hungry or desperately thirsty.
Why bother with such annoying traditions anyway? If it's optimism you're looking for as you head into a new year, there's another old tradition that seems much better-suited to modern tastes.
Most people are looking for the easy, quick fix. That being the case, a better alternative to New Year's resolutions would be to restore the traditions associated with the yule log.
The burning of the yule log is a practice that was brought to this country from Europe by the colonists - as were many of our holiday traditions. Though the practice originally involved burning the log only on the eve of the winter solstice, it gradually became associated with Christmas Eve and later with the season as a whole.
Your average colonial farmer would have known that the yule log should be cut from an oak tree, especially one struck by lightning, since that is the wood with the most supernatural power.
Either a new log was burned in the hearth each year or the same log was sawed into pieces and burned year after year. In either case, the ashes from such a log were collected and saved because they were thought to have the power to guard the cabin's inhabitants against misfortune.
Human nature being what it is, this seems a much more reliable way to ensure a prosperous and safe future, especially since its "power" doesn't involve any real change on my part.
I don't know about you, but it has a much better chance of working than any New Year's resolution I might make.
LENGTH: Medium: 65 linesby CNB