LETTERS: MILLENNIAL YEAR STARTS JAN. 1, 2000

To the editor:

I have noticed with dismay that an enormous number of businesses are seeking to capitalize on the erroneous notion that Jan. 1, 2000, marks the beginning of the third millennium. The notion is erroneous because the new millennium actually begins on Jan. 1, 2001. This is due to the fact that the first year of the first millennium was A.D. 1. There was no year zero. Our years are numbered according to a system developed in the sixth century by a Roman monk named Dionysius Exeguus. He worked in Roman numerals, which had no number zero. Thus we went from 1 B.C. to A.D. 1. The first millennium, therefore, was from A.D. 1 to A.D. 1000, and the second millennium is from A.D. 1001 to A.D. 2000. Just as each century ends with two zeros, each millennium ends with three. Pope Gregory's calendar reforms, mentioned in Sam Blackwell's Dec. 6 article, did not address that issue.

So what's to be done? How do we deal with the enormous task of educating the general public? Perhaps we need to do a simple change of phrase. Instead of a millennium essay contest or a millennium edition of the Southeast Missourian, we could have a Beginning of the Millennial Year Essay Contest.

I realize this may seem trivial to some, but I cringe at the thought of folks at the end of the next millennium choosing our 999-year millennium as the topic of their essay on millennial oddities. "Who did they think they were, those egocentrics of the 1990s, changing a system that had been in effect for nearly 2,000 years just so they could sell a few extra bottles of champagne?"

MARK KOEHLER

Cape Girardeau