Happy New Year 2010 !!!!

[Alex]

Originally Posted by JWBear

"The 80's" (like any such designation) is a cultural designation, not a calendar one.

That was my point. And celebrating the end of any particular 10 year period is also a cultural designation. We aren't commenting on the end of the first decade of the 21st century, we're commenting on the end of the 10-year period consisting of years that start with 200x. We're culturally excited by an extra number on the odometer changing, not by oddities introduced into the system by a monk a millennium ago.

Of course, the fact that there was no year zero is just a cultural designation and not an inherent calendrical one either. This whole thing could go away by designating 1BCE as Year 0 (it doesn't matter since they got the year of Jesus's birth wrong anyway) and if we had kept the Babylonian sexigesimal counting system we'd not care a damn about decades, we'd have to wait 60 years for an onslaught of "decadal" recaps and 3600 years for an end of the "century" party.