To the Editor:
By the time midnight Dec. 31 arrives on the East Coast of the United States, Y2K will have arrived in much of the world to the east, which includes countries ranging from highly developed and comparable to the United States to highly undeveloped. Listen to the 11 o’clock news. What you hear will likely be a good indicator of what will or will not happen at midnight.
LESTER G. FREUNDLICH
Stamford, Conn.
December 30, 1999
To the Editor:
On New Year’s Eve I am going to do something that is impossible to do the day before or the day after. I am going to celebrate in a way that was prescribed thousands of years ago. Although it is hardly an everyday event, it is a kind of celebration whose regular practice through the millenniums will make the doing of it on the evening of Dec. 31 seem as natural and right as if I were born to it.
My celebration will involve a real taste of the world to come. It will be punctuated by music that will transport me to places I could not imagine possible. It will include magnificent poetry that is thousands of years old. It will include the joy of family and friends. It will start with candles and move to wine and then to a braided bread whose recipe my mother learned from her grandmother and she from hers before that.
On New Year’s Eve, as the sun sinks low, I will observe the Sabbath.
(Rabbi) JONATHAN H. GERARD
Easton, Pa.
December 30, 1999
To the Editor:
While the pedants clearly have the math on their side, it is hard not to sympathize with the partyers when faced with the almost mystical allure of that beautiful round number, 2000.
But as I have pondered the various nuances of the “When does the millennium start?” debate, I have stumbled, perhaps, on a third way.
We know that a millennium is a measurement of a thousand years.
This being the end of the second millennium means that we are 2,000 years from something. But 2,000 years from what?
Even pedants and partyers can probably agree that we are talking about 2,000 years from the birth of Jesus. However, many historians put the birth of Jesus at 4 B.C. This means that 2,000 years from the birth of Jesus actually passed a few years ago. So here’s my proposal: When the clock strikes midnight, let’s jump the calendar ahead to 2003. Who knows, this may even solve that Y2K problem.
DAVID IRVING
Albany
December 30, 1999