Lost in much of the mass media hype about crashing computers, power failures and midnight parties on New Year's Eve is the reason the date exists at all.
It is interesting that we anchor the calendar, now used throughout the planet, to the birthdate of a person born in an obscure, rural community in Palestine.
In a cover story on "Jesus in 2000," published earlier this month, Time Magazine asserted that by any means we might apply to rank historical figures - Stalin, Roosevelt, Hitler, Gandhi, Mao - whether worshipped or hated, the "most powerful figure in all of history" was Jesus of Nazareth.
The millennium puzzle began happening in the fifth century when a monk set a calendar starting at Jesus' birth. The problem was that he, of course, used Roman numerals, which contain no zero. So he logically set the date of birth of Christ at 1. To compound the problem further, another monk, two centuries later, created more confusion by counting backwards from Christ's birth. But he, too, had no zeros, so the calendar went from 1 A.D. to 1 B.C., missing a whole year. Or is it two years? All of which explains the controversy over whether this Friday night is the beginning of a new century and a millennium or not. Well, is not, and we are celebrating at least a year early.
What matters is the universal force of Jesus' birth. "Why 2k" is ultimately answerable only in our hearts, not on a calendar, and something to ponder deeply.
Happy New Year.