New Year’s Resolutions

Week of January 4, 2026 – January 10, 2026

by Katie McLaughlin, Environmental Educator

We officially made it through 2025!

I see a lot of people creating resolutions for the New Year, from exercising more, eating better, spending less. However, I find myself aligning less with resolutions and more and more with the seasons. The winter has just begun – and when we look at nature in winter it is a time of rest. So why did we choose January as the beginning of the year instead of the beginning of spring when nature rises from its slumber?

Currently most of the world follows the Gregorian Calendar – Which has January 1st as the start of the New Year, as well as leap days every 4 years (okay most every 4 years). But there were other types of calendars that were followed before – and some are still followed now!

The Roman Calendar is a lunisolar calendar that combined the lunar cycles with the solar year. Historians have yet to uncover exactly what this calendar followed, but it appears to be a 10 month, 304-day calendar that started March 15 and ended in December. The winter months were not accounted for (the winter was irrelevant to the farming cycles) until about 713 BCE when January and February were added.

One thought from historians is that in 153 BCE Rome’s military moved the start of the government year to January 1st as a political move. This was due to government officials needing to take office earlier because of the Celtiberian War in Spain.

Julius Caesar in 46 BCE imposed the Julian Calendar as a reform of the Roman Calendar. The Julian Calendar is a solar calendar with 365 days and leap years every 4 years without exception. This calendar became the predominant calendar for the Roman Empire and most of the western world for the next 1,600 years.

In 1582 the calendar was off by about 10 days due to a slight miscalculation of the tropical year, or how long the Earth actually takes to orbit the sun. The Earth orbits the sun on average every 365.2422 days, but they had overestimated it a little bit at 365.25 days (or 11 minutes too long every year). Spring was arriving around March 10th instead of the 21st – and the spring equinox is used to figure out when Easter is, along with the lunar cycles. Pope Gregory XIII took out 10 days from the calendar in 1582 to make up for this lost time to realign Easter with the start of spring. This created the Gregorian Calendar much of the world uses today.

History is definitely interesting. I personally find myself feeling more like the New Year starts in spring, and I take winter to reset myself and rest. Perhaps my personal resolution for the Gregorian Calendar is taking time for myself to figure out my growth in the spring. How are you restarting this year? What do you think – Should we restart the year in winter or spring?

We invite our members to enjoy a weekly blog written by our naturalists. Every blog will be uniquely different but always inspired by nature. We may share a memory from a recent hike at The Woods or teach you about an animal or plant that lives on the preserve. No matter the topic, we will be sharing with you our passion for nature and celebrating the connections we all have to the natural world. Each blog will be connected to a weekly set of activities and ideas to help you put nature in your hands, even if you’re at home!