Frazz by Jef Mallett for September 16, 2021

January is the start of the school year (Down Under anyway)… admittedly end of January…

I have managed to keep almost all of my new year’s resolution over the last decade or more. The trick is to keep the number low, so you can concentrate on what’s important. I usually pick “zero”.

new years was just last week wasn’t it?

If New Years is arbitrary and making New Year’s Resolutions is thereby arbitrary, why not just say any day is okay (or just as good as any other) for making a resolution. Or, as has been said by many before, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”

Apparently not bugging Mrs. Olsen was not among them.

I do mine at the beginning of the old roman new year – 1 March

If every adult became seriously depressed at all the useless resolutions they blow away, think of the lines at psychiatrists’ offices. Caulfield is just developing his level of transient angst earlier than most. It doesn’t last long.

March was always historically the new year, I always thought is was silly to have the tenth month be the end of the year, but it is now.

Is that supposed to be an M-1 shirt?

My favorite strip on this subjecthttps://www.gocomics.com/frazz/2011/01/02

It used to drive me nuts to deal with two calendars in my head – school and regular. Not an issue any more.

Or the first day of spring?

Close proximity of New Year’s Day and a day to atone for past behavior? Jewish folk are way ahead of you.

Where the years begin and end varies greatly from culture to culture and even within cultures. It doesn’t even have to be even to a month—I have this vague notion that at one point the “English” new year bagan on 15 March or something like that. In any case, for a time February was the first month among the Romans (N.B. “september, october” etc. etc. the “seventh, eighth” etc. months, and the words were literally “seventh month” etc. (Old Latin *septem-mensris which yields September by regular Latin sound laws).

Never made N Y’s resolutions; made N S Y res. instead. Kept up thru early October (& the semester ran thru January [early ’60’s])!