"Go on, ye scientific sages,collect your light a few more ages,
perhaps as swells the vast amount,
a century hence you'll learn to count."
-- The Connecticut Courant, Jan. 1, 1801
All right, I give.
Well, maybe I don't give entirely, but I am beginning to soften, kind of like that big frozen bird that sat gently thawing in our refrigerator for a couple of days before Thanksgiving. Intellectually, I know the next millennium won't begin until Jan. 1, 2001, but I am willing to concede two things. First, it doesn't really matter. Time is what we each make of it, and the numbers we assign to years have little significance, nor are they particularly accurate. Most scholars believe Christ was born several years before what we now call A.D. 1, so the Christian world may already be in its third millennium. Second, today's generation is not necessarily more stupid collectively than the generation of our great-grandparents or our great-great-great-great grandparents, for that matter. I know I said differently before. I was wrong.
The poem at the beginning of this column finally got me to bend on that point. It was cited in the December 1999 issue of American Heritage, part of a small but well-researched piece that documents the great century debate through history. The Connecticut Courant was not-so-gently ribbing the folks who had insisted on celebrating the start of the 19th century in 1800. Aren't you glad newspapers are a little less pedantic these days?
This is important stuff, as I learned last January when I wrote a column that called the vast majority of the world's inhabitants fools for planning their big end-of-the-century blowout this New Year's Eve. The mail came thick and heavy. A lot of people agreed with me. One particularly insightful man said I was the only journalist he had read who had his head on straight. A lot of less-insightful people took the other side. One man even called me at home to plead his case for the year 2000. The most sensible people, however, asked the sensible question, "So what?" In their opinion, a lot of us egg-heads needed to lighten up, move away from our calculators and suck on a noise-maker. (Or do you blow in those things? I never remember.)
American Heritage notes the controversy that raged in 1899 in the New York Times, Atlanta Constitution and St. Louis Post-Dispatch, among other papers. The Post-Dispatch went as far as to advocate a referendum to decide when the 20th century was to begin. When Kaiser Wilhelm declared that the new German century would begin on Jan. 1, 1900, one U.S. newspaper called him, "The only man of any prominence who cannot count up to 100."
The Deseret News was no less certain on the subject. It scarcely noted Jan. 1, 1900, but gave a royal welcome to the new century a year later, complete with drawings and recaps of the previous century. One hundred years later, virtually all newspapers, including this one, are solidly in the other camp, believing the new century and millennium begins in 2000.
I'm tired of pulling my hair out over this one. As you can see by my picture, that is a rather limited response, anyway. A recent story in the Houston Chronicle estimates at least 40 different calendars are being observed worldwide at present, depending on one's culture and religion. The Kodi people of eastern Indonesia's Sumba Island base theirs on the cyclical swarming of sea worms, for instance. The Gregorian calendar we observe has undergone enough changes and jiggering over the years to really confuse things. The major difference between it and the others is that the Gregorian calendar has the potential to shut down all our computers at the end of this year. The Kodis have worms. We have bugs.
And so, as the final holiday season of the whatever-it-is begins, I am bending. No longer will I scream at my television when someone refers to 2000 as a new millennium. In the face of an inaccurate counting system, I yield to the tide of popular opinion.
Just as many people in this state celebrate Christmas on Dec. 25, even though they don't think it is remotely close to the actual date on which Christ was born, I am willing to keep my mouth shut and not spoil the fun for the idiots . . . er, people who ring in a new millennium a month from now. It is, after all, a significant event -- the end of the 1900s. That's as far as I can go intellectually. OK, give me a noisemaker and show me what to do with it.
Deseret News editorial writer Jay Evensen can be reached by e-mail at even@desnews.com