Call me a party pooper. Call me a pedant. Call me a boring old fart.
But this decade does NOT end at midnight on December 31, 2019
It ends at midnight on December 31, 2020.
And yes, that does mean that we celebrated the new millennium a year early. The year 2000 was the last year of the old millennium not the first year of the new one.
Here’s why
Our calendar is based on the year it was believed Jesus was born. There is no Year Zero in the scheme which was devised by Dionysius Exiquus in 525 AD but wasn’t widely used until the ninth century.
This calendar went from 1 BC to 1 AD. So we count our decades from 1-10 not from 0-9.
Our centuries begin with numbers ending in 1, not 0. Similarly our millennia.
So you can celebrate the last this and the last that of this decade right now. And you can celebrate the new decade on January 1 next.
But I’m going to wait until next year.
Because I actually am a boring old fart.
Well, 66 is old.
Mind you, if I was Chinese I’d be 67.
But that’s another story.
Paddy's World 