Millennium
We are anxious. Who knows what changes the new millennium will bring? Are we ready to avoid the mistakes of the past and get the millennium off to a good start?
We are excited. We know there will be massive changes coming, and we will be fortunate to witness the beginning of it all. Yes, we know Jan. 1 may not technically be the start, but our calendar is human-made, and if this is the landmark that billions of people choose as the year of reflection and nonstop end-of-the-millennium list-making, then this becomes the significant turning point. Technicalities notwithstanding, we feel something momentous about changing that first digit of the year from a one to a two.
We are awed. The line we draw between Dec. 31 and Jan. 1 will be a major time demarcation for the rest of human history. Taking into account our increased population and our greater reliance on time-sensitive information, it does not belittle the past to call this coming Jan. 1 the most dramatic and significant start of a new year ever.
Near midnight on Dec. 31, gather your loved ones. Gaze at the sky, changing but lasting, the guidepost for our definitions of time itself. Feel the anxiety, the excitement, the awe. Happy new year/decade/century/millennium to all.
HOWARD SERBIN
Trabuco Canyon
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Considering all the disagreement over when the century/millennium ends, I would like to propose a simple and obvious solution. Let us move the start of the calendar back one year to point zero, where it should be. If we can take the bold step to separate church and calendar even as our wise founders separated church and state, then the years of the Common Era will remain the same and proceed in orderly fashion to Y2K and beyond without the usual brouhaha. This proposed shift of only one year backward wouldn’t wreak much havoc with the then-obsolete BC dates, as most of them are in round numbers anyhow. Besides, the ancients won’t complain. They never heard of BC, let alone BCE.
MARK SINK
Los Angeles
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The difference between our culture today and that of 99 years ago is that today popular error wins by acclamation over fact or mathematical rectitude, in print as on bar stools.
Those who believe a decade ends with its ninth year also believe Payne Stewart’s hat was a Balmoral, though any Scot or illustrated dictionary could have set them straight on the latter.
We care less nowadays whether we’re right than whether we’re contradicted.
MIKE JELF
Lomita
*
Nobody “forgot” the year zero when setting up the calendar and the first millennium went the full 1,000 years. The millennium still doesn’t end until Dec. 31, 2000, no matter what Madison Avenue says.
The bright spot in all this foolishness is that those of us wishing to celebrate the real millennium next year will have a much easier time getting reservations and hotel rooms than all the suckers did this year.
PAUL McELLIGOTT
Lake Forest
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Here’s hoping the power stays on this New Year’s Eve (I want to watch the end of the world on TV).
WILEY C. ROSE
Temple City
FO