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Fallacy: 2000
will be the start of a new millennium. Well, as noted above, the whole
system didn't have a year zero. The first decade started with year 1, so
the second decade started with the year 11, the second century with the
year 101, the second millennium with the year 1001 and so on. Thus, the
third millennium will start in 2001, not 2000. Cricket fans of course will
understand this well. The batsman only receives the applause after
completing his 100th run, not just as he starts it.
All right: so when does the new millennium start then?
6 April 2001.
Eh? Why not 1 January 2001?
Well, the first day of the year at the time the calendar was calculated
to start from was 25 March. (Think this through: based on Christmas
being 25 December, the date when the angel Gabriel told Mary she would
conceive and bear the Christ-child is assumed to be nine months earlier.
Therefore, the calendar of our Lord starts on that date - the
Annunciation - since life begins at conception, not birth. Whatever
you make of the assumptions, at least there is logic to them!) Until the 18th century, it still was, and
people used to write two year numbers down for dates in the period from 1
Jan to 24 Mar. Thus, what we would think of as 5 January 1629 would have
been written 5 Jan 1628/9, to show that although by the calendar it was
1629, the civil year in progress was still 1628.
Okay, so why 6 April then, why not 25 March 2001?
Over the years, the calendar in use, the Julian Calendar, grew out of
step with the seasons. When people realised, a new calendar was devised,
and then a transfer had to be made. Different countries made the transfer
on different dates, and so they had different amounts to adjust. When
Britain caught up with the countries that had changed, the adjustment
necessary was 11 days. Thus, the year 1752 was only 354 days long in
Britain, everything else really happens 11 days after you'd think it would
if that adjustment had not been applied. In Britain, the tax year still
starts on 6 April, because the taxpayers here have never accepted the idea
of paying a year's tax for less than a year of life.
Even so, that's only true of Britain, why so parochial?
Two reasons. First, of course it isn't only true of Britain, because
when Britain changed it was only catching up with the other countries that
had already changed, and since then, the other countries that were out of
step have also switched to the same date as is used in Britain (and
elsewhere). Second, thanks to the history of the development of
timekeeping, all time around the world is measured relative to a fixed
point in Britain - the cross-hairs in the transit telescope at Greenwich
Observatory.
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Fallacy: Because
it's 2000, lots of strange things will happen and the world will come to
an end. Well, I wrote this in 1999, so there's a chance that I'll be
proved wrong, but just because there's a pretty pattern in the number of
the year, it doesn't mean that a cataclysm will follow - after all, both
1999 and 2000 contain a triple digit.
And anyway, since Einstein figured out that how you perceive time
depends on where you are and how you're moving, the concept of there being
such a thing as absolute time has been abandoned.
(And that's without worrying about the 2000 from what question -
if the world was going to come to an end on the 2000th anniversary of the
birth of Jesus, then it's already overdue because that happened a few
years ago)
Comment added in 2001:
See: we're still here.
I told you so.
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So, with all this going on, is there
really any significance to the year 2000?
Well, aside from the fact that people are using it as an excuse for a
bigger-than-usual New Year's party, no, not really.
However, it is as well to reflect on the reason for the date being what
it is, since it is a reminder (albeit an inaccurate one) of the coming of
Jesus into the world. Christians believe that Jesus is the Son of God, who
came into the world to save people from the consequences of growing away
from God. Throughout the past two thousand years, people who have come to
understand and believe that have been inwardly and outwardly transformed
by it. It's a simple message of hope for us all; weigh it up for
yourself. |
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