MILLENNIUM FEVER

Somewhere between sunset of the night before and sunrise on THE DAY, everything will change. Undead religious heroes will resurrect. Aliens will invade. Computer programs will crash and cause apocalyptic data errors, banks will collapse, cultists worldwide will commit mass suicides and other eccentric gestures..

THE DAY will bring apprehensions, turmoil, hope, frenzy, greed, prostration, and -- as is the overwhelming custom of our age -- great celebration and extravagant group debauchery.

THE DAY is January 1, 2000 AD. The holiest of holy days. There is no question this day will have great meaning and consequences..

Many of the uninitiated believe THE DAY to be the beginning of the second millenium since the birth of the offspring of a Jewish woman we now call Mary and either a Roman soldier named Pantera or a meandering omnipotent God of Abraham, depending who you believe.

These spiritual peasants that are ignorant of the true grandeur and Holiness of THE DAY seem to believe that THE DAY commemorates 2000 years after the birth of Jesus Christ. I will lead you away from these errors and help you realise the true significance, the true Holiness of THE DAY, the greatest of days.

First off, since these uninitiated ones celebrate the birthday of this crucified hero on December 25th, it would seem reasonable that even the most unthinking traditionalist would agree that at best THE DAY was 6 days after the 2000th anniversary of the birth of their Lord. These 6 days represent the beginning of the Holy Erroneousness that gives THE DAY it's power and glory. All praise the Holly Erroneousness for it holds the true great meaning of THE DAY.

The subject of the birthday of Christ is a highly contentious area. Few disagree that the traditional December birthday of Christ comes from the pagan winter solstice and not the birth of Christ. The best guess as to the actual day of his birth is March 13th, fixed by a lunar eclipse that happened on the previous night, perhaps the legendary star of Bethlehem. Thus, The Holy Erroneousness of 6 days grows another 8 months and 12 days.

Is THE DAY Two Thousand years, 8 months and 18 days after the birth of Jesus?

Not Quite.

Before the year 1 AD was the year 1 BC, there was no "Year Zero" The Arabic notion of Zero had not yet established itself in the west when Charlemagne imposed the idea of dating events from the birth of our remarkable demi-god bastard of Judea.

Therefor, because the first year was Year 1, the first year of any new century or new millennia must also end in "1". So, in case you're counting, THE DAY is not the first day of the new millenium, but rather the first day of the last year of the current millennium. But, what the heck, who's counting?

Is THE DAY One-Thousand-Nine-Hundred-Ninety-Nine Years, 8 Months and 18 days after the birth of Jesus?

Ummm. No. Uh-Uh.

The Julian calendar's method of accounting for leap years put the years out of date with the seasons. In 1580 Pope Gregory XIII deleted 10 days from October, although this caused great riots in his time as hordes demanded their 10 days back, this realigned the new Gregorian calendar with the seasons and inflated our Holy Erroneousness another 10 days.

Is THE DAY One-Thousand-Nine-Hundred-Ninety-Nine Years, 8 Months and 28 days after the birth of Jesus?

Not exactly.

The phrase "Anno Domini" (The year of the Lord) and it's dating was propagated through England, Gaul and the known world by the "Ecclesiastical History of Britain" which was completed by the Venerable Bede in what we would now call the year 731 AD. Bede based his AD dates on a set of Easter Tables that provided the date for Easter Sunday in each year, the tables were compiled in the year we would now call 525 AD by a Roman monk named Dionysius Exiguus.

Dionysius was the first to measure events "from the Incarnation," unfortunately he left no explanation of how he figured out the date of "the Incarnation" and all responsible historians believe that the cleric Dionysius Exiguus made an error.

In terms of the mysteries of THE DAY and the Holy Erroneousness, it was the greatest clerical error of all time. The Error of Errors.

Historians argue weather Christ was born in 2 BC, 4 BC, or even earlier, but all worth noting agree that Dionysius' date was incorrect, the most damning evidence being that the well documented Herod the Great, who is clearly alive in the Bible's nativity stories, died no later than 1 BC, so Christ must have been born before then. The March 13th day based on the lunar eclipse was in 4 BC, and is the most cited historical birth date.

So whether this adds 2 years or 4 years to the Holy Erroneousness is not clear, but what is clear is that THE DAY, that great day of days, is 2000 years after the anniversary of nothing in particular..

What is certain is that the true hero of this great celebration that is before us is not Jesus Christ, but rather Dionysius Exiguus! And the GREAT EVENT which is commemorated by THE DAY is not a birth but rather a clerical error!

Is THE DAY One-Thousand-Five-Hundred-Seventy-Five Years from the anniversary of a great clerical error?

Well, not quite, because it's unlikely that that Dionysius composed his Easter Tables on New Years Day, so the actual Error of Errors would have been a few days after, One-Thousand-Five-Hundred-Seventy-Five Years before THE DAY.

What is without question is that whatever happened 730,000 trips around the sun before THE DAY has long been forgotten. THE DAY is not about two thousand years ago, THE DAY is about our ultimate transcendence into the abstract. Our final escape from the mundanity of truth and our final and permanent plunge into a world created by our own ideas, traditions and delusions.

In the modern era were labels are more valuable than details, where headlines matter more than stories, where perception is much more meaningful than fact, what could be more wonderful than this day?

Look to all the frenzy, all the extravagance, all the tragedy that will come on THE DAY as great symbols, signs, omens, you must see these things as conclusive proof of the unbounded Holiness of the Absurd. The Sacredness of the Preposterous.

Like proudly striking a flag into a landscape with no known coordinates, we mark THE DAY as existing outside of any relationship with any other point in time. An unrelated coordinate in on an uncharted map. Arbitrary yet absolute. THE DAY will soon be upon us!

Hallelujah!

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