Millennium Celebrations: Count Him In

According to a story in the paper the other day, President Bush has already promised the Millennium Society to be present at the Great Pyramid of Cheops, Giza, Egypt, to celebrate the arrival of the 21st Century on New Year’s Eve, 1999.

I am not surprised that a man who thinks Pearl Harbor was on Sept. 7 could imagine that the new century will arrive one year early; but I would have thought anything named the Millennium Society would know better.

As everyone who can count should know, the 21st Century will begin on Jan. 1, 2001, and not before. Though I have pointed this out in two or three columns, many people, if not most, cling to the notion that the century will turn at Jan. 1, 2000.

“I think someone (and he be you),” writes Frank W. Spencer Jr. of Goleta, “should tell Mr. Bush that he’s joined the wrong club if he wants properly to mark the end of the 20th Century and the beginning of the 21st.

“I would suggest, therefore, that you and your now-alarmed readers form the Jack Smith Society for the Proper Observation and Celebration of the Millennium, the third of which begins on Jan. 1, 2001.”

I am honored by Mr. Spencer’s suggestion, but I doubt that there is any point in forming such a group. From the failure of my past efforts to persuade the general public that the century ends on Dec. 31, 2000, I have concluded that people simply don’t want to believe it. They want the century to end on Dec. 31, 1999. They want to get it over with. They want out of it. It’s as if they believed a new millennium will bring a better world. Or maybe it’s just that they can’t wait for the big blow off.

If everyone were convinced that the century would not end until Dec. 31, 2000, that wouldn’t inhibit anyone from celebrating “the turn of the century” on Dec. 31, 1999.

Charles E. Lang of Greensboro, N.C., has gone to considerable trouble to document the fact that the third millennium does not begin until Jan. 1, 2001. He notes that the U.S. Naval Observatory, the Greenwich Observatory, Colliers Encyclopedia, the Academic American Encyclopedia, the New International Encyclopedia, The World Book Encyclopedia, Webster’s New Third International Dictionary, Encyclopaedia Britannica, The American Heritage Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary and the World Almanac all affirm that the century ends on Dec. 31, 2000.

Lang also notes that Saul Pett, a veteran Associated Press reporter, writes dramatically of the years as changing like the numbers on a speedometer. “And before we know it, there will be three nines and then the days, the weeks, and the months will roll up and out and finally, in a single moment of breathless magic, a zero will come up for the year, another zero for the decade, a third zero for the century and, with one to carry, we will have a whole new millennium in the life of humankind.”

Max W. Strauss writes that in the January issue of the AARP (American Assn. of Retired Persons) News Bulletin an article by Hubert Pryor begins: “There’s not much time left. Eleven years to go before we leave the 20th Century.”

Mr. Strauss comments: “Because this bulletin will be read by AARP’s 37 million members, it will take someone of your stature to refute Mr. Pryor’s lousy arithmetic.”

He explains the fact of the matter, perhaps more succinctly than I have: “Presumably, our calendar started with the year one (1) and therefore every decade and century must start with a one, i.e. 1981, 1991, 2001. Mr. Pryor, like others of his ilk, confuses the end of the 1900s, which would be the end of 1999, with the end of the 20th Century, which will be the end of 2000.”

Right or wrong, we are going to have one super bash on Dec. 31, 1999. What we will be celebrating, though, will be the end of the 1900s, not the end of the century or the second millennium.

Count me in. I’ll be drinking champagne and blowing my whistle like everyone else. Why poop a party just because it’s one year early?