By Nathan Bierma
December 17, 1999

So how are you celebrating the turn of the millennium? It’s a little early to know for sure, of course, since the millennium doesn’t start till 2001 (come on, this really is not that complicated.)

Believe it or not, people are actually toning down their landmark New Year’s Eve bashes. A growing number say they will watch the ball drop at home in a subdued evening rather than track down the grandest gala or wildest party in town. Cavernous convention centers will echo rather than rock as event sales lag and cancellations stream in.

It’s a surprising show of restraint from a nation that so recently deemed Pokemon a worthy cause of adulation and frenzy.

Yet we can venture a few guesses as to what’s going on.  First of all, these parties, -- and the accompanying clothes, drinks, and remaining nine yards – come with price implants, thanks to whoever decreed that the ceremonial millennium turn was reason enough to charge ten bucks for bottled water.  People are getting wise.

Then there’s – don’t laugh – the Y2K bug, which could be more annoying then we figured.  Of course, the apocalyptic panic quieted to a dull roar a while ago, but it has given way to shrugging shoulders.  One report found that a fourth of personal computer users hadn’t touched their machines when it came to Y2K.  Though the world will keep turning with little tribulation, we could be in for more than our share of pains in the neck come midnight of the 1st. Cause for some to wait it out at home. And since more people will be working the graveyard shift in anticipation of the bug, the party-going population
decreases further.

And there’s the false ceremony of it all, which has managed to be at least  somewhat exposed. Call us pedants (or worse), but word has gotten out that since there was no year zero, we’re stuck in the twentieth century for another year. There’s also the matter that Christ was born about 2005 years ago, an event set as the watermark date by a sixth-century monk with a faulty abacus.

More importantly, historians will tell you the twentieth century ended even earlier than that.  They work with eras, and the nineteenth century as an era began around 1790, with the founding of the United States and upheaval of the French Revolution, and lasted until World War I in 1914.  The twentieth century as an era got the short end of the stick,
taking over with the first world war and closing with either the razing of the Berlin Wall in 1989 or the crumbling of the Soviet Union in 1991 (the era made up for its brevity with a flurry of unprecedented totalitarian cruelty and technological revolution that cements its place in history as most significant.)  

While people may not be staying home on the 31st for these observations, it nonetheless takes some dramatic wind out of the millennium’s sails.

Again, it amounts to a healthy show of balance by a Pokemon-loving people. Home is a good place to be, though, because a tush planted in the well-worn easy chair of the past is a good vantage point from which to observe the future.

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