Luxury hotels in New York are already planning $1,000-a-person celebrations to usher in the year 2000.
On the other side of the world, in New Zealand, the Millennium Adventure Co. has secured the rights to the world's "first light" on the slopes of Mount Hakepa on Pitt Island, just east of the international date line, about 745 miles southeast of Christchurch.Discounting the fact there was no year zero and following the Roman calendar to the nice round number of 2000, most people will be celebrating the beginning of the third millennium after the birth of Christ the moment the clock strikes midnight on the final day of 1999.
However, for scholars who have long claimed that Jesus was born earlier than the traditional date, the third millennium may have already begun.
According to one scholar who has extensively researched the date of the first Christmas, Christians may have just missed the actual date. Historian Paul Maier of Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo calculates that Jesus probably was born in November or December of 5 B.C.
"It was most likely during this season, 2,000 years ago, that the baby was born who would change the world," says Maier, author of "In the Fullness of Time." "This Christmas, then, is the sort of milestone that only one generation in 30 has the chance to celebrate."
Scholars who have tried to determine when Jesus was born have generally come up with a time somewhere between 7 B.C and 4 B.C.
One of the main problems with the current dating is the Bible's reference to King Herod's learning of Jesus' birth and consulting with wise men from the East. Herod would die soon after, but historical sources indicate he died in 4 B.C., making it impossible for him to have talked to the wise men in A.D. 1, according to the traditional dating system.
The original mistake, according to Maier, was made by a sixth-century Scythian monk named Dionysius, who was responsible for the B.C. and A.D. calculations. He was about five years off in his calculations: Jesus was born 748 years after the founding of Rome, not 753, Maier said.
In addition to the timing of Herod's death, there are other chronological markers that support a nativity date during 5 B.C., Maier said.
If Jesus was born later than 5 B.C., he would have been too young to fit with the Gospel of Luke's report that he began his ministry at about 30 years of age, Maier said. The testimony of the church fathers also supports a date closer to Herod's death, although the events that occurred before his passing make it unlikely the first Christmas would have occurred in 4 B.C.
Since there is no year zero, that means the third millennium after the birth of Christ probably started in November or December 1996, according to Maier.