When does the new decade begin? Not everyone agrees — and that much we can agree on
Some things we’ll surely argue about tonight at New Year’s Eve parties: who should be elected president in 2020 and can someone other than Ryan Seacrest get a shot at hosting “Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Year’s Eve” for a change?
Add one more: Does the new decade begin at the stroke of midnight or do we have to wait until Jan. 1, 2021?
“In the binary times in which we live, it might not surprise anyone that people can’t even agree on when one period of time ends and another begins,” NPR wrote on Friday.
This didn’t seem such a topic of discussion until Dec. 31, 1999. That’s when Y2K approached and amid all the hysteria over whether computers would explode in confusion, everyone was excited about the arrival of a new century — or not.
Those of us in the Team 0 camp looked on the naysayers as killjoys. Nattering nabobs of negativity who just had to ruin our delight in living through the start of a whole new century.
Those in the Team 1 camp looked at the Zero group as mathematically challenged — probably illiterate, too.
“We start counting from one,” they’d argue. “There was no Year Zero!”
“Oh yeah? Well in the book of Genesis it says ‘God created the heavens and the Earth in six days and rested on the seventh’ so does the whole first 365 days of existence not count for anything?”
So who is right?
Experts at the National Institute of Standards and Technology — a Maryland group that measures time and is the official source of time and day — said they are taking no official position on the debate, CBS reported.
On Twitter, the NIST posted that while it had no official position on what defines a decade, “still, we can point out that the term decade refers to any ten-year period. Culturally, people have referred to a decade as a period starting with a 0 and ending with a 9 (1970-1979).”
Conversely, Sandi Duncan, managing editor of the Farmer’s Almanac, told NPR’s “Morning Edition” that “the next decade won’t start until Jan. 1, 2021.
“It’s one of these mathematical conundrums that people can argue about until they’re blue in the face,” Duncan told NPR.
The fight has spilled over to Facebook — of course — on a Miami woman’s post in query.
“Centuries and Millennia start with years ending with “1” while decades start with years ending with “0”. The decade of the 2020’s starts January 1, 2020,” argues a Team 0 camper in New York.
“Since the first year on record was 1, then 10 ended that decade with 11 starting the next one. Been the same way ever since,” countered a Team 1 camper in California.
YouGov, a digital global public opinion company, noted that this is a relatively recent debate so earlier this month it conducted a survey. Of the more than 13,500 people who responded, 64% of Americans said the next decade will begin on Jan. 1, 2020, and end on Dec. 31, 2029. Seventeen percent said the next decade won’t start until Jan. 1, 2021. And 19% weren’t sure.
The percentages held about the same across regional lines, gender and income. And this was one instance in which Democrats and Republicans found common ground. The political party numbers were also closely matched with the overall percentages.
Perhaps the reason the majority say the 20s begin tonight as soon as Seacrest shows us the Times Square ball dropping — it’s already done so in Australia — is because culturally we talk about chunks of time, like decades, using words like “the ‘70s, the ‘80s, the ‘90s, the Roaring ‘20s” and this puts an emphasis on the zero’s weight.
Still, you can bet there’ll be plenty of roaring as the ‘20s begin this midnight.
Or in 365 days.
This story was originally published December 31, 2019 at 2:19 PM.
