By Kayla DeKraker
If you didn’t feel excited about making resolutions and embracing the new year, actor James Van Der Beek has a theory why.
“Anybody else out there finding that your New Year’s resolutions are impossible to keep?” the DAWSON’S CREEK star began a recent Instagram video. “I’m gonna say something. I don’t think it’s your fault. I think it makes total sense.”
“Why are we celebrating a new year in the dead of winter?” Van Der Beek asked. “Why are we celebrating new beginnings at a time when nature rests? Animals are hibernating. Birds fly south for the winter. The time to celebrate new beginnings and a new year and a new you and a new resolution is spring at the vernal equinox, when the flowers bloom and it gets warmer, and the birds return.”
Van Der Beek then explained the history behind our calendar system and why it feels a little off.
Related: Americans Focus on Faith and Family With New Year’s Resolutions
“Why are we fighting nature? In all due respect to Pope Gregory…who saddled us with the Gregorian calendar system, but it just makes absolutely no sense.”
He continued, “Plus, hear me out on this one, if March is the first month of the year, that means September is the seventh, October the eighth, November the ninth, December the tenth — you see where I’m going with this right?”
He concluded, “I’m gonna take the winter to recover, to rest, and I’m gonna make New Year’s resolutions in the spring. Who’s with me?”
In the caption, he added, “In the winter, the days are shorter and the nights are longer. But instead of being reminded how perfect this season is for cocooning, eating stew, snuggling and sleeping…why are we being told this is the time to buy a gym membership?”
The Gregorian calendar was an attempt to correct a small miscalculation in the former Julian calendar.
History.com explained, “In 1582, when Pope Gregory XIII introduced his Gregorian calendar, Europe adhered to the Julian calendar, first implemented by Julius Caesar in 46 B.C. Since the Roman emperor’s system miscalculated the length of the solar year by 11 minutes, the calendar had since fallen out of sync with the seasons.”
Regardless of the history of the calendar, the Bible makes it clear that there is a time and season for everything, and if now isn’t your time to make resolutions, that is okay.
Ecclesiastes 3:1 says, “To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven.”
If in this new year, you feel the need to rest alongside nature, do that. The spring will come, and a new season to make resolutions will begin.
Read Next: Forget New Year’s Resolutions — What About New Year’s Prayers?
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