Well, this is possibly IMHOish, as I doubt my actual question is going to spark a lot of serious debate, but it touches on enough controversial subjects that I figured I’d post it here.
Anyways, last week, in a thread I’ve now forgotten, there was some talk of why people use BCE/CE rather than BC/AD. The reason being that for those who are not Christian or who are but favor a secular method of numbering years it’s a handy way to use the common date system while stripping out some of its religiousness. Which is all well and good, but it seems to me a rather half-hearted measure. I mean, whether or not you use BC/AD the years are still numbered from the supposed birth of JC (more or less).
So, I was thinking of asking whether or not we should change our calendar so that our years are not numbered from some religious event, which would have been very GDish. But, after thinking about it for a little bit, I just couldn’t see anyone seriously advocating that (yes, I realize within the first ten response there will be a post from someone doing just that). Sure, everything else being equal, it might not be a bad idea, and I’m sure quite a few people would favor it (just as there would be those who wouldn’t), but practically speaking it would be a whole lot of expense and trouble for little gain. Yes, it was done in the past, the switch from the Roman system of counting from the founding of the city to our present one, but the costs involved then were miniscule compared to what it would take now, I suspect. So, I came to the conclusion there wasn’t much to debate there.
However, while thinking about it, I wondered: if we’re not going to count years from the birth of JC, what would we count them from? I mean, any choice of an event to start counting from is incredibly arbitrary, and bound to piss some people off. Which will hopefully make this a fun topic to discuss. So, how about it? Let’s say sometime in the near future the US has decided that expense be damned (Al Gore must be president) we’re going to start using a new calendar system, and you somehow managed to get put in charge of choosing a new year one (or year zero, if you prefer). When is it (in the current system’s chronology) and what does it commerate? Or would you do like the french revolutionaries and declare the present as year one? Oh, and assuming you’re not going to start with the Big Bang as your event, what terms would you use to replace BC/AD and seperate the years before year one from the years after it (unless you prefer the idea of negative years)? And if you like the current system and want to pick JC’s birth all over again, feel free, but I’d suggest you take advantage of our increased knowledge and move year one closer to the year he was actually born in (currently considered to be between 6 and 4 BC, if I’m not mistaken).
P.S. I’m aware that I’m using the wrong word, technically speaking. A calendar is a timekeeping system that devides up a year into various other units of time (e.g. months, weeks, etc.), not a system for numbering years. However, I’m not exactly sure what the right word for that would be (chronology?), so I used calendar.