By now, I imagine many of you have concluded your New Year's celebrations, so welcome to the year 2024! How did you celebrate the New Year? Did you ring in the New Year publicly with friends and family or simply spend it quietly at home? Or, perhaps, you spent the holiday providing care and comfort to the sick and injured patients with your team in your trauma center. However, you did; I hope it was just what you wanted it to be.

So what is it about New Year's? What does it mean to you and your family? From a historical perspective, the celebration of the New Year full of festivities dates back about 4,000 years ago to the ancient civilization of Babylon, where the first new moon following the vernal equinox symbolized the start of a New Year with an equal amount of sunlight and darkness (History.com, 2022a). This “first” recognition of the New Year actually occurred in mid-March. As civilizations moving forward sophisticated the calendar to what we know today as the Gregorian calendar, established by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, the date of January 1 became accepted by many cultures worldwide as New Year's Day. Interestingly, the month of January got its namesake from Janus, the Roman God of Beginnings, who possessed two faces, one looking backward and the other facing forward. Janus represents the meaning of New Year to many as a time to look back on the prior year and, at the same time, to look ahead at the New Year just beginning (History.com, 2022b). In any case, with the exception of a dozen or so cultures around the world, New Year's celebrations begin on the evening of December 31 and continue into January 1.

So, what does New Year's Day mean to you? Some see it as a symbol for starting over by leaving some things in the past while embracing new challenges or perhaps change. Others think of it in a spiritual sense as the old year representing death and the New Year as birth or rebirth (Elizabeth, 2023). In any case, it is often seen as an opportunity for growth, prosperity, and self-improvement. For as many cultures and countries as there are in the world, there are at least that many different customs and ways to celebrate the New Year. We know that most include symbolic food and drink, festivals, parties, the dropping of a giant ball at the stroke of midnight, and maybe even fireworks.

For me, the end of each year and the start of a new one has always been a time to reflect on all of life's happy and sad events that occurred that year. It's a time when I try to find closure for any events or situations that occurred. I like to do some mental and, of course, some physical housekeeping at the end of December. Reflecting on the year, I sort through those events, holding on to the good and letting go of the not so good. Though I thoroughly enjoy the holiday season, the cleanup of my holiday decorations and reorganizing of my house have always been a satisfying tradition for me as a way to welcome in the New Year. Evidence of my family's festivities is all tucked away by December 31. Then, to ring in the New Year, tradition in my Pennsylvania German family is pork and sauerkraut supper to ensure “good luck” throughout the year. As the superstition says to look forward to the New Year, “the pigs root with their snout in a forward motion to find food,” and each shred of cabbage in sauerkraut represents the many riches wished for in the year ahead (Wildbrine.com, 2022). Viel Gluck!

When it comes to New Year's resolutions, this tradition, too, dates back to ancient times, with Babylonians and Romans making promises to their gods (History.com, 2022a). Defined as “a promise to yourself that you make a serious effort to do something that you should do” (Brittanica, n.d.), New Year's resolutions are made by many people each year throughout the Western and Eastern worlds.

I imagine many of us can recall years when we made New Year's resolutions.

Many make resolutions to change something in their life, perhaps a particular behavior or an undesired trait, or to set a specific personal or professional goal. I don't know about you, but I have often found that there have been many years that I started the New Year with a resolution, only to be disappointed later is that I did not follow through with that promise for one reason or another. In hindsight, I believe that some of those “resolutions” I made were just not realistic. Perhaps, they were more global or general in nature and, quite frankly, too difficult to achieve. I now prefer narrowing my focus to more specific, perhaps more realistic, achievable goals.

As I continue as your President, I've given a lot of thought to 2023 and the New Year ahead. The Society of Trauma Nurses (STN) organization has experienced much success this past year. The promulgation of Pediatric Trauma Across the Care Continuum Course (PTACC), the development and support of STN's Trauma Program Manager Position Statement, representation at World Trauma Congress, the addition of a Geriatrics Committee and a Burn Significant Interest Group, a very successful TraumaCon 2023 conference, monthly educational webinars, and ongoing collaboration with key partners are just a few examples of these successes. In my Presidential Address at TraumaCon and my first presidential message at JTN, I asked members to take a chance, get involved, volunteer for a committee or project, or maybe attend a virtual webinar. For those of you who are already involved, I challenged you to find a colleague and welcome them into our organization so they, too, can explore the many possibilities that STN has to offer. In thinking of my New Year's resolution(s) for 2024, my promise to myself and STN is to continue encouraging members to get involved and help grow our organization one person at a time. No matter how small or large, I hope you, too, will get involved and encourage your peers to do so. We all have so much to learn from each other and just as much to offer. Thank you for making STN your professional home and contributing to our mission of providing optimal trauma care to all people. Best to all in 2024!

Britannica. (n.d.). Resolution. Retrieved October 27, 2023, from https://www.britannica.com/dictionary Elizabeth D. (2023). 31 New Year resolution affirmations for a spectacular 2024! https://wildsimplejoy.com/spiritual-sig-of-new-year-celebrations History.com. (2022a). Ancient New Year's celebrations. Retrieved October 27, 2023, from https:www.history.com/topics/holidays/new-years History.com. (2022b). New Year's traditions and celebrations around the world. Retrieved October 27, 2023, from https://www.history.com/topics/holidays/new-years Wildbrine.com. (2022). Why should you eat sauerkraut on New Year's Day. Retrieved October 28, 2023, from https://wildbrine.com/sauerkraut-new-years-day