"Did you make any New Year's resolution? Of course you did! Who doesn't? There is something irresistibly magnetic about the first day of the New Year — something that compels a new channel of thought ... One looks back with regret for the things that might have been done, and deplores things that have been done, and forthwith makes a resolution to remedy the omissions this year."

So wrote a reporter, who seems to have been getting paid by the word, for the British Exeter and Plymouth Gazette on January 4, 1913.

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This year, most Americans will resolve forthwith to do some permutation of "getting fit" or "losing weight."

But New Year's resolutions predate our modern-day weight concerns by centuries.

So, what did people resolve before we had the scourge of cellulite and the temptation of McRib to stir us to action?

The answer: just to be a better person, apparently. Resolutions from the early 20th century ranged from swearing less, to having a more cheerful disposition, to recommitting to God.

New Year's postcards from the early 1900s, for example, reveal a touchier, feelier time for goal-setting, encouraging their recipients to dedicate themselves to living a "sincere and serene life" and "repelling promptly every thought of discontent, anxiety, discouragement, impurity, and self-seeking." Others said to smile when you "fall down and out" or to simply keep a diary.