Time Of/Off the Millennia

Gerald L. Zelizer

Millennia mania is accelerating. There are web sites listing every news article of the last decade that refer to this crossroads in time. Others post merchandise, including programmed watches and bells, wines, books, office chairs, skin creams. and excursions which directly or not so directly are attached to the coattails of the year 2000. One site even ticks off the minutes and seconds remaining until the turn of the century, while another advertises a book of adages and witticisms useful for those who become anxious as they count that expiration. An entrepreneur secured a trademark for utilization of 00 to be used on shirts and drinking glasses. More cerebrally, a few years ago, Hallmark Entertainment asked ten playwrites including David Mamet, Neil Simon, and Wendy Wasserstein to write short pieces about "what the year 2000 means." Some of these creative souls reported trouble finding much significance at all.

Their lapse was prescient, because the whole calculation of next year as the two thousandth year after the birth and circumcision of Jesus is derived from erroneous guesswork. The numbering of the years that we use now was adopted by the Synod of Whitby, which formalized in the Christian calendar a computation of years done by a sixth century monk, Dionysius Exiguus. In trying to standardize the Christian liturgical calendar, he counted backwards to the year in which Jesus was born. Scholars agree that Dionysius was wrong by more than four years, because Herod, ruler of Judea at that time, died in 4 B.C. and Jesus' birth happened a year or two before that. So all the celebrations, which will usher in the new millenium on December 31, are actually several years too late!

Then too, much of the world's population, except for business purposes, will not be marking the year 2000. During that year, it will be 4698 in China, and 2390 to Zoroastrians in Iran. Moslems, whose religion is the fastest growing in the United States, will mark 1421 in their calendar, while Jews, who observe the oldest religion, will be in 5760. How can there be a global party to which much of the human population will not show up?

Even for those for whom it is 2000, the significance of the millenium is diminished because that mark on the Gregorian calendar is hardly the most significant way of marking time in their lives. Time, in both our collective and personal lives is measured as much by psychological, cultural, and religious factors as it is by signals from pages on a wall calendar and by the seconds and minutes calibrated from Greenwich, England. For example, sixty minutes measured by one's watch is psychologically far longer to the person waiting by the telephone for his physician to return a call with the results of an important medical test, and far less to the person engrossed in a dramatic film or vacationing in idyllic conditions. Rabbi James Michaels of Flint , Michigan has written how our birthdays and anniversaries, which end in 0, take on more significance than do those with numbers like 1 or 2. For that reason, greeting cards, which herald the 30th or 60th birthday, are more plentiful than those of the 29th or 59th.

The particular sub culture in which we live also dictates how we measure time off the calendar. Scholar Eviatar Zerubavel in his book The Seven-Day Circle explains how these variations, devised in each culture to order our activities, ultimately dictate the way we perceive the world. Church bells that sound on Sunday signal that it is the first day of the week in more powerful ways than a marking a point on a calendar. The gloominess of Monday as the retooling of the workweek is only felt in those contexts where people return to their jobs on that day. To someone whose work begins on Sunday, Monday may actually feel like Tuesday! Even the rhythm of garbage collection, which is scheduled on a designated day, is a cultural signal that a particular day has arrived.

On Friday night, December 31, of this year, I will celebrate with my family the passage of time. Prayers, meditation, group singing, dialogue, food and alcoholic drink around a festive table will mark the juncture between the old and the new. Our ceremony, though, will not be a party in recognition of on the New Year of the Millenium, but rather a prayer meal ushering in the Jewish Sabbath which begins at sundown on Friday and ends after sundown on Saturday. Dr. Imad Ahmad of the Mineret of Freedom says that his only acknowledgement of the change of clock on December 31 will be "to check the proper workings of my four computers." A representative of the Chinese Consulate in New York explains that he will save his most enthusiastic celebration for February 5, the Year of the Dragon.

Millennia mania is unwarranted. The erroneous initial calculation many centuries ago, coupled with our daily lives in which we each mark time in other ways that are more significant than the ticking to 2000, hardly add up to the current frenzy.