I have always thought that September was a much better month to make New Years Resolutions. Like January it has the same "New Start" feeling about it but without the cold, miserable weather!
September has always been one of my favourite months. The colder weather and the kids going back to school helps us slough off the lethargy and relaxed routines of holidays. Unlike January though, most of us are happy to re-enthuse ourselves with the daily routines which we threw off so happily in June/July.
The big difference to me is that Autumn is not cold and dark and there is a very handy goal for targets in Xmas. Its so much easier to plan our resolutions until Xmas rather than the daunting prospect of trying to make plans for a whole year! It also helps that even the kids are facing something new even if its only a new school year with new teachers.
This is why I have always made my own New Years Resolutions in September as well as January. There is a different energy to the resolutions we make in September than the ones we make when poor and despondent in January. Rather than the January resolutions which tend to be about giving various things up I use the renewed energy that summer holidays bring to make more positive targets with the target of completion by Xmas.
I am not the only person who doesn’t make their New Years Resolutions in January.
Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, starts on September 29th. It is a 2 day festival which marks the anniversary of human's creation and the special relationship between Humans and God. A common greeting at this time of year is L'Shana Tova which means For A Good Year. Celebrations include eating apples dipped in honey to symbolise wishes for a sweet and pleasant year. Also eating pomegranate as its seeds symbolise the hope that the year will bring many blessings.
The Islamic New Year is also at this time of year, like most non Western New Years it changes every year and in 2019 it was August 29th.
If you prefer to make your New Years Resolutions in the dark winter months you still don’t have to stick January 1st
Chinese New Year. In 2020 it will start on 25th February and it is the Year of the Rat. So get Valentines Day out of the way and then make your Resolutions with a target date of Easter.
February still too dark and gloomy to make those changes? How about April? Thai New Year, called Songkran, is on 13th – 15th April in 2020. Traditionally Thais clean their house and especially clean any images of the Buddha they have. Songkran focuses on spiritual intentions like giving alms to monks and visiting Buddhist temples so if your New Year Resolution is of a spiritual nature then this sounds like a perfect time to make them.
At Best Years we make New Years Resolutions for January – July and then again September to Xmas.
At the start of this year we concentrated not on our knitted toys and dinosaurs but on their packaging. We made a commitment to remove as many of our single use plastic bags as we could which meant starting with our dinosaur toys.
Its been a bit more complicated than we envisaged but from August all our dinosaur toys will be supplied without their single use bags. The feel good factor this has given us has coloured our decisions about what New Year Resolutions we make for the next 4 months.
We still want to concentrate on our environmental impact but in order to maintain our enthusiasm we have changed the emphasis slightly. This autumn we will look to how and where we source our toys to see what other improvements we can make. We want to increase the number of toys which use environmentally friendly methods of production. So hopefully we will introduce some more natural rubber toys which are such a great alternative to plastic. And we will try to expand our Upcycled toy ranges as they are such a fabulous alternative to single use products. We will also see if we can increase the number of baby toys we buy from fair trade and organic partners. Watch this space, its going to be exciting!
Will you be making any New Years Resolutions? We would love to hear about them!
Best Years Ltd www.bestyears.co.uk
