Debate over millennium celebrations

Debate over millennium celebrations

A number of  have legally adopted , also used in contexts, which uses the n which year counting starts at 0. Thus, when using this calendar, the millennium starts at x000 and ends at x999. There was a popular debate leading up to the celebrations of the year 2000 as to whether the beginning of that year should be understood (and celebrated) as the beginning of a new millennium. Historically, there has been debate around the turn of previous decades, centuries, and millennia. The issue is tied to the convention of using  to count millennia (as in "the third millennium"), as opposed to using numbers (as in "the two thousands"), which is unambiguous as it does not depend on which year counting starts. The first convention is common in English speaking countries, but the latter is favored in for example Sweden ("tvåtusentalet").

The common Western calendar, i.e. the , has been defined with counting origin 1. Thus each period of 1,000 years concludes with a year number with three zeroes, e.g. the first thousand years in the Western calendar included the year 1000. However, there are two viewpoints about how millennia should be thought of in practice, one which relies on the formal operation of the calendar and one which appeals to other notions that attract popular sentiment.