🚀 go-pugleaf

Bill Newton <Bi...@notwen.demon.co.uk> wrote in article
<$c3SqUAD...@notwen.demon.co.uk>...
> In article <33a559d1....@news.structured.net>,
> Fre...@hempseed.com writes
> >were you 1 when you were born?  ..think about it, weve all celebrated
> >a 1st birthday....1 year after you were born...not the day you were
> >born...
> 
> In looking at 'birthdays' , which we celebrate 
> annually,  we traditionally celebrate for a full day i.e the date which
> corresponds with the date of our birth.

Correct.
 
> So, If I'm born for example at 23.59 hrs on December the 31st, that
> date becomes my 'birthday'.

Correct. The time doesn't matter as long as it's on that date.
 
> This means that each year my 'birthday' would commence
> immediately following midnight on December 30th and last for a
> period of 24 hours.

Correct.
 
> So I actually ENTER my 'birthday' 23 hrs and 59 minutes before the
> actual time of my birth. 

Not exactly, and irrelevant anyway. It's a birthDAY, not a birthminute or a
birthsecond. A birthday is an anniversary, nothing more. It doesn't
precisely measure any period of time. If it did, you'd have to celebrate
your first birthday on Jan. 1, about 5:45 in the morning (unless you were
born on a leap year, in which case it would have to be moved back a day).
Your birth "moment" would have to advance further each year, until it was
moved back after leap years, then it would advance again. Very confusing to
the guests.
 
> Now! A 'Millenium' cant be celebrated yearly 'cos its NOT a
> Millenium til a thousand years have passed.

Correct.
 
> So, it's obvious that we need to celebrate the YEAR in which the
> Millenium 'comes of age'

There isn't any "coming of age." When a thousand years have passed, that's
it for that millennium. 
 
> (Much the same way as we celebrate the DAY in which homo sapien
> celebrates a 'birthday')

Not really. Your birthday is the anniversary of the date of your birth, and
it lasts all day and that's that. A millennium isn't an anniversary of any
kind. It's a period of time. 
 
> That will be the year 2000, which  of course commences immediately
> following midnight of the 31st December 1999.

No. The year 2000 is the last year of the second millennium. As you
yourself have correctly noted, it's not a millennium until a thousand years
have passed. The present millennium ends when the year 2000 ends. 
 
> So, we actually ENTER our Millenium 'birthyear' celebrations
> immediately following midnight on December 31st 1999 even though
> there's still a year to go before the Millenium 'thousand' is reached. 

No. The first year in our system.was year 1. If you want to think of
"birthyear" for a millennium, the first such anniversary would have been
1001, the next 2001, and so on. Just as you add one year to get from one
birthday to another, you would have to add a thousand years to get from one
millennium "birthyear" to another.
 
> The upside of this is that we can quite legitimately  party like mad
> for an entire year i.e. until the 'actual' thousandth year concludes at
> midnight on December 31st 2000. Thats when the 'birthyear' ends.
> The second Millenium will be no more. Ah!

No, you'll have to keep partying for another whole year, if you want to
celebrate your millennial "birthday" correctly.

Neil