The Secret Pleasure of Breaking New Year’s Resolutions

Have you noticed how, as soon as we make our ritual New Year Resolutions, we start bragging about how grandly we are going to fail to keep them? And, indeed, the accompanying feeling of relief, even secret pleasure, that we experience as we do so? In the delicious confusion of the festive season, when the old year is about to die and the new one is yet to be born, with cheek, glee, and self-irony aplenty, we let everything go. “I want to drink less or quit smoking this year. But who are we kidding? That’s never going to happen!” we tell ourselves with a giggle. We know only too well that in the morning, when the feast is over, we will return to our old seriousness. Only now, we play the end-of-the-year game with all the more abandon.