Millennium - Debate Over Millennium Celebrations - Popular Culture

Popular Culture

• Stephen Jay Gould noted in his essay Dousing Diminutive Dennis' Debate (or DDDD = 2000) (Dinosaur in a Haystack) that celebrations and media announcements marked the turn into the twentieth century along the boundary of 1900 and 1901, citing, among other examples, the New York Times's headline "Twentieth Century's Triumphant Entry" on January 1, 1901. Gould also included comments on adjustments to the calendar, such as those by Dionysius Exiguus (the eponymous "Diminutive Dennis"), the timing of celebrations over different transitional periods, and the "high" versus "pop" culture interpretation of the transition. Further of his essays on this topic are collected in Questioning the Millennium: A Rationalist's Guide to a Precisely Arbitrary Countdown.

• Douglas Adams highlighted the sentiment that those in favour of a 2001 celebration were pedantic spoilsports in his short web-article Significant Events of the Millennium. This sentiment was also demonstrated when, in 1997, Australian Prime Minister John Howard made a point in favour of the 2001 celebration and was named "the party pooper of the century" by local newspapers.

• In an episode of the American television series, Seinfeld, titled "The Millennium", Jerry Seinfeld states, "Since there was no year zero, the millennium doesn't begin until the year two-thousand and one."

• The action of the book The Headless Bust: A Melancholy Meditation on the False Millennium, by Edward Gorey, takes place on December 31, 1999, and it refers to the next coming year as the start of the new Millennium, despite the fact that the title of the book calls it the "False Millennium."