>It will not be the 21st Century until 1/1/2001....
>>... the 2000th year will begin in the year 2000.
>>>OK, once more slowly. There is no year zero. The first year of the
>>>Christian era (regardless of when JC may or may not have been
>>>born) was year 1.... we will then, at midnight on Dec. 31,
>>>enter the 2001st year, and the 21st century. Which is, I
>>>believe, exactly what Larry (correctly) said.
While I agree that, technically speaking (calculating in increments of
100 years), the millenium will begin in 2001, I believe that we're
missing a somewhat relevant point.
The common and accepted practice seems to be that we begin a new century
when the "digits roll over," ie, 1 January 100 began the second century,
1 January 1900 began the twentieth, etc. As a practice we do not include
the year ending in 00 in the previous century (ie, the year 1900 is never
referred to as part of the 1800s or nineteenth century).
It seems, then, that as a matter of convenience we have set the number of
years for the first century as being 99, with all centuries following
each containing 100 years. As this has been a commonly accepted and
practiced tradition for several hundreds of years (almost 2000 by my
reckoning) it appears that we have constructively accepted this as the
manner of calculating the arrival of each new century, and, from that,
each new millenium. Thus, we are equitably estopped from arguing an
alternative.
I would also note that we have no real method of calculating the
correctness of these dates. As I understand it, the common era (AD or
CE) calendar begins with an arbitrary date; that is, the birth of the
Christ (I won't go into whether or not such event occurred as it is
obviously a matter of personal belief). Unfortunately, no one seems to
agree on when this occurred in relation to the modern calendar. Some
claim it occurred before the year 1 (as calculated under the modern
calendar), some claim afterward. It would seem, then, that it is
entirely possible that the millenium has already come and gone, and
equally likely that we will celebrate early (even if we hold off until
2001).
We must also consider all the irregularities and changes to the calendar
that have occurred since the starting date (we 'lost' 11 days in the
1600's for example), as well as the lack of record keeping in regards to
years during the first millenium. In the grand scheme of things, though,
I think we must consider that, other than being an interesting diversion,
whether or not the millenium change occurs this year, next year, the year
after, or some other time, really doesn't mean a whole helluva lot.....
YMMV
Just my $0.02....
Rich
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