behold, for the day has finally come! sermon year 3, week #25. the first sermon of common year 2000. the first sermon of the 3rd millennium. a paragraph full of fragments.
yes, january 1st has come & passed. the world not only didn't end, but apparently it didn't contemplate the idea at all. even in countries such as russia that expected massive y2k catastrophes the utilities stayed on & the computers kept running. my, was it anticlimactic. sure, the parties telecast globally from other nations were fun & interesting, but where was the turmoil? where was the apocalypse? nowhere to be found. i expected something somewhere to break, but i never heard about it. say hello to a glorious new apocalypse-free millennium!
in fact, the only downside to the new year is the recent slew of 2001ers. i'm sure you've come across them. whenever the discussion turns to millennia, some whiner has to butt in & say, "actually, the new millennium doesn't begin until 2001, because there was no year zero. therefore 1-1000 are the first millennium, 1001-2000 are the 2nd, & the 3rd begins jan 1, 2001." then they expect you to slink off, humbled, now that they've supplied you with the "correct" information. whatever. the true date of the beginning of the millennium is largely a matter of opinion, revolving around which year-numbering system you use. hell, in the past people didn't always even celebrate the new year in january! some people celebrated it in the middle of march (mar 25), or on other strange dates.
all calendars are astronomically inaccurate. the calendar we use now, the gregorian calendar, was instituted because the julian calendar was too inaccurate & the solstices were slipping far from their tradtional dates. in fact, to move from julian to gregorian required deleting 10 days from the year 1528 so that oct 5 was followed by the 15 (& not all countries switched over at the same time either! some countries switched literally hundreds of years later). but even the gregorian calendar is inaccurate; in fact astronomers can't even agree on exactly how long a year is. it depends on how you measure.
& none of that has anything to do with what year it is. the calendars really only measure what day it is. when julius caesar enacted the julian calendar, he wasn't numbering the way we do now. that didn't come along until the 6th century when some monk decided our years should be numbered from when jesus was born instead of when rome was founded. so he picked a date he thought was when the nativity might've been & called that year one. that's where BC (before christ) & AD (anno domini, in the year of our lord) come from. of course he picked wrong; historians now say jesus would've been born 4-6 years earlier. personally i wouldn't mind going back to numbering from the founding of rome, but nobody else uses that system so it'd be awfully inconvenient.
this monk (i can't remember his name; if you want it go to http://www.magnet.ch/serendipity/hermetic/cal_stud/cal_art.htm, which is a great site about calendars & was an invaluable resource for this sermon) also decided that the first year before "jesus's birth" (really just a calculation error) would be the year 1 bc. hence there is no year zero by his numbering convention.
now that's all well & good for him, but it wreaks havoc for astronomers, historians, etc. that missing zero thoroughly complicates any calculations revolving around date. it's also not so great for the millions of non-xians in the world, who don't want to be slapped in the face with jesus propaganda every time they have to think about a year. the solution is the common era calendar. you might've seen this, or a watered-down version of it, in various historical or sociological texts. in place of that infernal AD we get CE (common era, or xian era if you please). the watered-down version keeps BC but calls it BCE (before common/xian era).
the real common era calendar has no BC or BCE anything. it uses the astronomical system of numbering years. year 1 BC becomes year 0 CE, & earlier years become negative numbers. scientists use this system because computations are simple & obey the standard rules of arithmetic, as opposed to their boggling complexity under that monk's system. non-xians can use it because it doesn't rely on any bogus holy birthday.
...& suddenly there is a year zero! so naturally "the first millennium" under this system was 0-999 CE. the 3rd began a few days ago on jan 1, 2000.
so you see, there is no correct answer about when the millennium begins. by one numbering system it begins in 2001; by another it begins in 2000. it all comes down to a matter of opinion, not a place for people to stick their big hairy noses in & claim they know more than you do.
which brings us to our contest, the first of the new millennium. what you must do is this: lie in wait for some 2001er to come along & try to tell you when the millennium "really" begins. then slam himr in the face with this sermon & the site about calendars i linked to! (i'll post it again at bottom) fill himr with so much data about calendars hisr head will wish it could explode, then send me a transcription of hisr concession speech (or confused rantings). okay, you don't have to be that violent if you don't like, & you don't have to ambush them. you don't even have to make them read anything if you're prepared enough with the info. just send me hisr humbled reply or your description to win a nifty prize (which i promise will be delivered!). contest will last until at least jan 18, because i will be away for my sister's wedding & unable to write week 26 until my return.
charge!
http://www.magnet.ch/serendipity/hermetic/cal_stud/cal_art.htm