Everyone knows what the first day of the year 2000 is, but there seems to be some confusion as to what the first day of the third millennium is.

If you do not think about it at all, January 1, 2000 seems the obvious date for the first day of the third Millennium. If you think about it just a little, January 1, 2001 seems the right date (since the first AD day of the current BC/AD calendar was January 1, 1 AD). However, a little thinking is often dangerous, and this is one case where it leads to the wrong conclusion.

Until about 1200 years ago, the years were marked by reference to some historical event (5 years after the flood, 2 years after the new king, etc). A monk about 1500 years ago first advocated numbering the years from the birth of Jesus, and this was adopted several hundred years later. Since new years were marked at the beginning of spring, the first date in this new calendar was April 1, 1 AD. In 1582 AD, 10 days were dropped from the calendar (due to errors between the calendar and the sun’s apparent position), and New Years Day was changed to January 1. All the years before 1582, including BC, were renumbered so that January I was the first day of the year. (The April Fools" were the people who still celebrated New Years Day on April 1.)

It is now well documented that Jesus was not born in 1 AD. There are good cases made for many different years for Jesus’s birth, and the latest is 2 BC.

So why should January 1, 1 AD be celebrated? It was defined about 525 years after the fact; changed about 1582 years after the fact; 3 months earlier than the original first day of I AD; evidently a day like any other day; not the birth year of Jesus. Is this really something whose 2000th anniversary ought to have a worldwide celebration? NOT!

Since there is no reasonable start date for marking the millennia (or centuries, for that matter), the only rational choice is just to celebrate the zeros. This has been called the odometer method. Regardless of how many miles were on the odometer when you got the car, you celebrate the zeros as they roll by.

The beginning of the second millennium was feared (in the Christian world) because it seemed to be a likely time for the second coming of Christ (1000 years after what? birth, death, resurrection, ascendance). The beginning of the third millennium is feared for a much more concrete reason (Y2K computer problems) and also on a very specific date (Jan 1, 2000).

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