Party Like it's 1999

Note: this essay makes more sense if you remember that it was written in 2000.

Musing on the mass millennial misconception.

What did you do for the millennium? Wrong! You can't have done anything "for the millennium". A millennium is a period of a thousand years. Not even Methuselah lived long enough to do anything for an entire millennium.

Alright, I'm just playing with words. I'm sorry, I'll be good. I mean: what did you do on the night the second millennium ended? Wrong again! You can't have done anything on the night the millennium ended, for the simple fact that it hasn't ended yet!

Now I'm just playing with numbers. The second millennium did not end on 31 December 1999. The second millennium will end on 31 December 2000. This isn't exactly a new revelation, and you may have heard the argument before. But in this article I'm going to try to explain the story behind it. Stay awake at the back!

The first year of our modern calendar wasn't agreed upon until the sixth century. That's right, for the first few hundred years of our calendar, nobody actually used the calendar. Several different dating systems were used and, as you may guess, much confusion reigned. Although most people probably didn't care what year it was. Days, nights, and the changing seasons would be important, not the tally of years.

Our modern system for numbering years was invented over 1400 years ago by a Christian monk, Dionysius Exiguus, who calculated when Jesus Christ was born and began counting years from there. (The term a.d. in our system of dates is from the Latin anno domini, "the year of our lord".)

Dionysius made a couple of errors in his calculation. First of all, his history was a bit weak and he missed Jesus' birthday by a few years. But that doesn't really affect our dating system. We started counting from the wrong year, but as long as we are consistent in the count then it doesn't really matter.

His other error was, however, was much more serious. He made an error in his algebra, which has since thrown everybody into confusion and lead to our millennium celebrations coming a year early.

So what did he do wrong? He started counting at year "one" instead of year "zero".

To see why this was wrong, think about a child's age. When it is born, a baby is not instantly "one". Alright, so we don't generally say that a baby is "zero". That would sound silly. But we know it's not "one" until it has been on Earth for a full year. Thus its first birthday is the day it becomes "one". Dionysius, however, decided that our baby calendar was going to be age "one" at birth. On its first birthday, it became "two". And so on, throwing off its age by exactly one year ever since.

We can forgive Dionysius for making this mistake, I suppose. It's a mistake that any mother would have caught, but, after all, monks weren't allowed to have children.

To illustrate why this mistake has caused the millennial confusion, try this simple experiment.

Begin counting the years of our calendar, beginning at the first year: One, two, three . . . keep going, I'll wait . . . 997, 998, 999 . . . ok, stop there for a minute. What year have you reached? a.d. 999. How many years have you counted? 999. How many years are in one millennium? 1000. Have you reached a millennium yet? Obviously not! Keep counting . . . 1000 . . . stop! Have you reached 1000 yet? Duh! So the last year of the first millennium is? 1000? Correct! So the first year of the second millennium must be? Umm, 1001? Correct again!

You're doing well so far. Continue counting the second millennium: 1001, 1002, 1003 . . . take your time . . . 1997, 1998, 1999 . . . stop right there! How many years have you counted since the second millennium started? 999. How many years are in one millennium? 1000. Have you reached a millennium yet? Obviously not! 1999 is not the last year of the second millennium! The one-thousandth year of the second millennium is a.d. 2000. The last day of the second millennium will be 31 December 2000. Proven by a simple scientific experiment!

So, most of the world got it wrong and partied too early. Is this a problem? Well, if you're a Jehovah's Witness or a Seventh Day Adventist (or maybe even a believer of Nostrodamus), the end of the second millennium probably means quite a lot to you. But I assume that you would get something so important right, so you probably ignored the opinion of rest of the world. Me? I don't have a religious reason to celebrate, and being a curmudgeon I just stayed in on that night. So will I be celebrating this year instead?

Well, no!

1999? 2000? 2001? It's just a number. It doesn't mean anything. Whether you get the right year or not, it's meaningless. It's an arbitrary date, thought up by a man not by God, and commercialised to death by the media. For goodness' sake, why are you celebrating a number? 1000 isn't magic! It's not even a very interesting number! Celebrate your child's birth. Celebrate your new job. Celebrate a war ending or a life being saved. Celebrate your football team winning, if that's important to you. Celebrate living another day, or another year. Celebrate the Sun coming up, and thank God for it if you want to. But why on Earth are we celebrating a period of years that none of us even saw much of?

Millennial parties? Who needs them?

Thanks for listening. I'm off to celebrate the writing of another essay!

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