Every ten years – and again, the year after that – I fight one of my most futile and petty battles: when, properly, a decade is considered to have ended. As 2019 races towards 2020, this debate has reared its ugly head once more.
Well, no one else is talking about it but me, so I guess I’m the one doing the rearing. Well, so be it.
See, most people follow the simple and intuitively appealing rule that when the number in the 10s digit changes, bam! New decade. So the Seventies ended when 1979 became 1980, the Eighties ended when ’89 rolled over to ’90, and so on.
Regrettably, these people are wrong.
What follows is a repost of a little essay I wrote ten years ago, arguing with people. It didn’t convince anyone then and it won’t convince anyone now, but I’m still sharing it because I’m stubborn, dammit.
When, properly, does a decade end? It seems this debate crops up every ten years. Indeed, it is a glorious debate stretching back centuries. In the January 1, 1801 edition of Boston’s Columbian Centinel, a reader letter commented on “the daily altercation known as the Century Dispute” by predicting that “if we could be indulged with a peep upon earth a hundred years hence we should find our children as warmly engaged untying this knotty point as ever we have been.” Indeed, two centuries hence here we are.
The divide between the two camps is well-known, their point of contention bitter. On one side, there is the “0-9” camp, relying primarily upon the seemingly forceful “isn’t it stupid for the year 1960 to be part of the 50’s and not the 60’s?” argument. On the other sits the “1-0” crowd, which asserts that the beginning of the calender is a 1, not a 0, and can’t you people count?
Of course, if you go with *sniff* informed opinion, there is no debate at all. For example, there is the lively debate that raged over whether the twentieth century would begin in 1900 or in 1901. A poll of fourteen college presidents yielded only two who argued for 1900: Caroline Hazard of Wellesley and L. Clark Seelye of Smith. And whoever heard of Wellesley and Smith? I haven’t and I haven’t bothered to Google them, so all force of logic dictates that they’re probably terrible. The New York Times sniffed that, ““facts and reason, the authority of all dictionaries, and the support of every chronologer and historian that ever lived, to say nothing of the invariable understanding and custom of all lands and ages” pointed clearly to a 1901 start date, dismissing “the delusion that there is a controversy as to when the twentieth century begins.”
It was not alone. The Atlanta Constitution was also firm for 1901, refusing to call ninety-nine years a century even though it endorsed the free-silver scheme of calling sixty cents a dollar. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, while endorsing 1901, suggested deciding the issue in true American fashion by holding a referendum.
Elite opinion in Europe was also deeply concerned over the weighty controversy. Astronomers and leading newspapers such as the Times of London were quite clear as to the 1901 start date. However, the imperial council of the Kaiser in Germany decreed that the 20th century would start in 1900. “Now let it decree that black is white,” responded one American newspaper; another called the Kaiser “the only man of any prominence who cannot count up to one hundred.” As things turned out, the Kaiser’s chronological slip-up was one of the lesser mistakes that Germany would make in the twentieth century.
The 1901 start date also recieved “official” status when it was endorsed by the Pope Leo XIII. Since the Catholic church is responsible for creating the Gregorian calender, presumably they would know. While that clears up matters for Catholics, Protestants and other heathens are unfortunately still left to unravel the knotty problem for themselves.
A simple appeal to commonsense further cements the position of “1 to 0”: Quick! Count to 10. Which number did you start with? 0? Or 1? You started with 1, unless you were anticipating my response and so started with 0 deliberately to confound me. Nice try, but that doesn’t count, so shut up. You learn to count 10 numbers ending at “10” in the first grade.
If you have 99 pennies, do you have a dollar? Does your second dollar begin when you hit 100 pennies? Or is the 101st penny the 1st penny of your second dollar? If you are counting pennies to make a dime, will 9 do? Or do you need 10? I suspect the US Department of the Treasury will back me up in confidently asserting that 10 is the requisite amount. Yet, if we are counting years instead of pennies, suddenly the magic number is the jump from 9 to 10? I think not!
Perhaps recognizing that in the “official” or “technical” battlefield they are utterly outmatched, the “0 to 9″ers retreat to the field of culture. Most of society believes that the decade ends tonight, and besides, isn’t it an informal designation, not at all resembling a century or a millennium (they are, of course, inescapably wrong concerning those epochs: The new millennium didn’t begin until 2001, sorry).
First off, numbers are irrelevant. Ten thousand people embracing the same error does not mean that the one dude who disagrees is wrong. That being said, there is some weight to the “cultural” argument. A decade can, after all, be any ten-year period. It need not be a formal progression in an orderly manner since Christ Himself. However, if we accept this, what is the culural marker that ends this decade, eh? Why the ten years from 2000 to 2009? There is nothing to distinguish 2009 from 2010 at all!*
When people refer to the “Sixties,” or the “Seventies,” the “Eighties” or the “Nineties,” they refer to a specific set of cultural markers: Long hair, miniskirts, hippies, Vietnam, or oil shocks, disco, bell bottoms, the afro, or leg warmers, big hair, Ronald Reagan, really awful music, or flannels, the “grunge” look, and the like. Thus, it is generally accepted that the year 1960 was culturally part of the 50’s. The ’80s are generally held to begin in 1981, with Ronald Reagan’s inauguration as President, and end in 1991 or so, with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The ’90s, as we think of them, did not really begin until after this period, perhaps not even until the election of Bill Clinton, and the current decade culturally probably began in 2001 (for obvious reasons). There is nothing new about this. Historians often refer to the “Long 19th century,” the period lasting from 1789 to 1914 that was essentially unified in terms of culture.
So, if you’re just arguing that the decade is a cultural term, well, then. Point out what dramatic event in 2009 brought this particular 10 year period to a close (and if you say anything at all involving Barack Obama I will hunt you down and punch you in the face). You can’t. There’s nothing. We can’t know what ended the “Aughts” (or the “naughties” in Britain) until sometime after it ends.**
To conclude: All the weight of “official” opinion backs up the “1 to 0” camp. The others are reduced to making the argument that it is a cultural term of measurement, not “official” – but then can’t explain why this particular decade must end in 6 hours, as opposed to another year and six hours.
Besides, the Pope hisownself is on my side, and that’s the next best thing to Jesus. Who can argue with the freakin’ Pope?
So, to conclude, I think it fitting to share a little poem composed by the Connecticut Courant marking the turn from the 18th to the 19th century back in 1801:
Go on, ye scientific sages,
Collect your light a few more ages,
Perhaps as swells the vast amount,
A century decade hence you’ll learn to count.
So shut up.
*This is true in 2019 as well.
**In retrospect, probably the Tea Party election of 2010 or the Arab Spring of 2011 mark the transition.
Gwangju Dreaming 