The third Christian millennium is nine days old, which means that an awful lot of people around the world are sitting down to their ninth consecutive dinner of corned beef and canned tuna and evaporated milk; religious nuts and rave bunnies are flipping through their calendars for the next suitable date for self-immolation; and sales reps specialising in generators and do-it-yourself water-purification kits are kicking back and counting their profits.
The hubbub and hullabaloo of the turning millennium is over, for now, and if it has taught us anything at all, it is that human beings are just as suggestible, superstitious and downright silly as they have ever been.
Is there any real difference between the Japanese foot-reading cult that expected to be carried above by a great fiery Nike shoe nine days ago, and Janet Portway, 37, a London insurance broker who spent the better part of December 31 filling saucepans and coffee mugs with tap water so that, when rogue nuclear warheads cut off her water supply, she’d still be able to wash her hair and brush her teeth?
Is there any difference between them and the group of French zealots who shaved their heads and sat naked on a Limoges hilltop, waiting for Revelation, 1 000 years and nine days ago? (Two were indeed carried aloft, incidentally, but only on the shoulders of their fellow monks, after they had succumbed to hypothermia.)
Of course, most of the wassail and waddahay regarding last weekend was generated by impulses less venerable than the human habit of reading signs as wonders.
“Forget the maths, let’s party!” trumpeted a Singapore daily newspaper.
“Millennium or not, let’s celebrate anyway!” yelled the headline of a Bangkok newspaper, irked by readers constantly observing that the Thais, as good Buddhists, stepped into the year 2000 all of 543 years ago. The Jewish calendar makes it the year 5760, the Chinese are in 4636, and any Byzantines still knocking around would be blowing out 7508 candles this year. But these are mere numbers. The world loves a good party, or most of it does.
Saudi Arabia frowned on millennial festivities, but stopped short of Afghanistan, where Taliban functionaries issued on-the-spot canings to anyone caught wearing a paper hat or kissing strangers at midnight. Frankly, the Afghans didn’t miss much. All over, the celebrations were as anti-climactic as any sane person could wish.
Fireworks displays in Canada were cancelled due to cold and daybreak in Giza found the pyramids hidden in thick mist, leaving the revellers alone with their hangovers and the music of Jean-Michel Jarre. In New Zealand a man won $500 and a new bed by successfully sleeping through the celebrations on a raised platform. He is neither the first nor the last man to prefer sleep to mingling with a crowd of New Zealanders. In Shanghai, a man beat his neighbour to death in a dispute about which of the two would be the first to die in the new century, a rash action that caused him to lose the bet.
Only in South Africa was there a notable acceleration of festive activity. The good people of Hillbrow, not content with celebrating by dropping the traditional beer bottles from the windows of 10-storey buildings, this year added ovens and queen-sized beds to the bombardment.
And of course, nothing changes. Cigarette sales are expected to plummet in the first days of the new year, as a zillion resolutions take effect, and to rise again within the week, as a zillion resolutions are broken.
We humans learn from nothing; not from disaster, not from anti-climax. Don’t think this is the last you’ll hear about the millennium. Already 80 percent of the votes cast on Millennium321, the self-proclaimed official website of the third millennium, are in favour of holding the “real” celebrations on 1 January 2001.
And don’t forget 2012, the year in which the Mayan cycle of time is scheduled to come to an end. No, my weary friends, we haven’t seen the end of the end of the world just yet.
Sunday Independent, 9 January 2000