SOUL FOOD:

So you dragged your heels on making that New Year’s resolution and now you’re skating on the conviction that you’ve eluded taking yourself to task for another year.

Not so fast.

You may have dodged the Western secular New Year but you haven’t ducked them all. If you adhere to any one of many faith traditions or are merely flexible about the New Year in which you promise resolve, you can still tackle that hobbling habit or guilty pleasure you’ve grown so keen on but would be better off without.

The Islamic New Year began at sunset Tuesday but won’t end until sunset Feb. 6. Called Muharram for the first month on the Islamic lunar calendar, it is also known as Al-Hijra, which means migration, because the Prophet Muhammad relocated from Mecca to Medina during Muharram in 622.

Apart from Ramadan, it is the most sacred month in the Islamic year.

While making resolutions about forming new habits or breaking old ones is not specifically a tradition during Muharram, the month is nevertheless seen as a time to consider the lessons of the past year.

During the month, Muslims are expected to give to the poor, to visit the sick and the graves of the departed, and to cultivate friendly relations with their enemies.

Differences between the Islamic lunar calendar and the solar Gregorian calendar used in the West cause Muharram to arrive twice during 2008, the second time at sunset Dec. 28.

Between now and then many other New Years will occur.

The dates of most are calculated according to lunar calendars, so they fall on different days of the Gregorian calendar each year.

Some are reckoned on more complex lunisolar calendars.

For Mahayana Buddhists the New Year begins on the first full moon in January. How it is observed greatly depends on which country it is celebrated in or where its celebrants originated.

But like the Western New Year, it emphasizes taking steps to live better.

In Tibet, Buddhists will ring in the New Year Feb. 8 with the three days of Losar. Two days before, they will carry out various rituals to purge sins accrued through the year.

Monks will perform mystical dances. Households will scrupulously clean, perhaps giving a fresh coat of whitewash to the house.

Human effigies, meant to embody the evils of the past year, will be sculpted from butter then destroyed on a ritual pyre.

The New Year will then commence uncontaminated.

Theravada Buddhists won’t greet their New Year until April’s first full moon. While other Buddhists along with Daoists and devotees of Confucianism will celebrate the Chinese New Year, which starts on a new moon — this year Feb. 7 — and ends 15 days later on the full moon.

Homes will be thoroughly cleaned before the festival but not as much to be rid of past sins as to avoid dusting or sweeping on New Year’s Day.

To sweep on New Year’s Day is to risk sweeping away good fortune.

Windows and doors are left open and firecrackers are set off to rush the old year out but nothing much resembles our practice of making resolutions to change one’s conduct. Cautious hopes of wealth and health, and longevity anchor these festive days.

Vaisakhi, the Sikh New Year celebrated either March 13 or 14, also has no tradition of personal resolutions. With parades and song and dance, it commemorates the birth of Sikhism in 1699.

Zoroastrians, followers of ancient Persia’s Prophet Zoroaster, hail the New Year at the vernal equinox, this year March 21.

In rituals using fire and light, it focuses on the prophet’s message of having good thoughts, having good words and doing good deeds.

Baha’is also mark the New Year on this day, though spelling it Naw-Ruz. It is observed by most in a low-key way, by meeting for prayer and perhaps dinner, the first day of the year coinciding with the last day of a Baha’i fast.

Cleaning house and donning new clothes are central to the Hindi New Year (April 6 this year) bearing “out with the old and in with the new” connotations.

But making resolutions are not part of its traditions that do include exchanging gifts and sweet treats.

On Sept. 1, Orthodox Christians mark their ecclesiastical New Year, which is in a way akin to the Sikh New Year.

The Feast of Indiction, as it is called, commemorates the time in the 4th century when Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.

Like the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur that follows it, the Orthodox Great Fast before Pascha — or Easter — has a bit more in common with the self-reflection and resolve associated with our secular New Year.

This year Rosh Hashanah begins at sundown Sept. 29 and ends at sundown Oct. 1.

Like the Orthodox Great Fast, though many days shorter, it is a period of self-examination and repentance and — unlike our secular New Year — also prayer.

Wiccans claim a form of Samhain (pronounced sow-in), the Celtic New Year on Oct. 31, as their New Year’s Eve. In its Wiccan form, it has more in common with Dia de los Muertos, Day of the Dead, that comes two days later.

Starhawk, a witch of renown describes it this way: “The gates of life and death are opened and to the living is revealed the Mystery: that every ending is but a new beginning.”

Most religious traditions offer many occasions throughout a year for introspection and growth. As long as there is breath, it’s a process to be embraced.

So if you dragged your heels on making that New Year’s resolution, it’s not too late. Maybe you’d rather call it a “determination” like the American Buddhist followers of Soka Gakkai.

Write it down. Put it on your home altar or, if you don’t have one, stick it to your bathroom mirror.

Resolve, or determine, to tackle that hobbling habit or guilty pleasure you’ve grown so keen on but would be better off without. Start your new year now.

MICHÈLE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She can be reached at [email protected].