Make a New Year Resolution for a friend, and help improve all our lives

New Year Resolutions go back a long way. Which is just as well, since they don’t go forward a long way - most of them don’t last beyond February.

Rumour hath it that it was the Babylonians who invented the idea. If they did, it clearly didn’t do them any good. How many Babylonians do any of us know, these days?

Admittedly, the early Christians also believed that the first day of the New Year should be devoted to looking back at past failings and resolving to do better. But if you’re hanging around a catacomb to avoid being fed to a lion and have nothing to do but wait for the next “Christianity for Dummies” letter from that control freak Paul, what are your alternatives?