IF one chooses to ignore the fact that even the most learned of Christian scholars cannot prove definitively (to the year, let alone the date) when the birth of Christ actually occurred and if one also ignores the date errors relating to use of the Julian calendar and its subsequent reorganisation to the Gregorian calendar format, which means that December 31 nowadays is not the same day as it would have been then, then Mr R Johnson (Letters, November 26) is technically correct in stating that the new millennium does not start until January 1 in the year 2001.

By simple arithmetic, if it is agreed that Christ's birth was the beginning of the first year of Our Lord (year 1AD), then it must also be agreed that 12 months later, ie at the beginning of the second year of Our Lord, only one year has passed.

Therefore, year 1AD represents months 0-12 of Our Lord's life, but at the same time, it represents the duration of year 1AD to the start of year 2AD.

It follows then that the second year of Our Lord, year 2AD, represents the duration of year 2AD, to the start of year 3AD. By simple extrapolation of the above, the 100th year of Our Lord, year 100AD, represents the duration of year 100AD to the start of year 101AD, and by extending the range of numbers to the present time, it can be seen that the 2000th year of Our Lord, year 2000AD, represents the duration of year 2000AD to the start of year 2001AD.

From the above, it cannot be disputed that the passing of a full 2000 years since the birth of Our Lord will only occur at the end of the year 2000. The reason being purely and simply that there was no year 0 (zero)AD.

Put even more simply, at the end of year 1AD, one year had elapsed from the date of the birth of Our Lord. At the end of year 2AD, two years had elapsed, and so on, until at the end of this year, 1999AD, 1999 years will have elapsed. The contra-debate is fuelled by the fact a century is a 100-year period (years 0-99), thus any given century finishes at the end of the 99th year, and a millennium, being 1000 years (years 0-999), finishes at the end of the 999th year. Using this logic, it is also obvious that the second millennium (years 1000, 1999) should end at the end of the 1999th year.

So both sides of the argument can be reasoned equally well, and the bottom line is that your choice of the 'correct date' will depend upon which side of the fence you sit on.

Personally speaking, giving due regard to both points of view and with all deference to Christian belief, I believe that we are still correct in celebrating the end of the second millennium at the end of 1999.

My reasons being that it will have been exactly one thousand years since the beginning of the year 1000, that we cannot be certain in what year Christ was actually born and, therefore, it would be rather pedantic and silly, when we celebrate the turn of a century at midnight on December 31, 1999, to celebrate the turn of a millennium (a precise multiple of a century) at midnight on December 31, 2000.

M VALENTINE (Mr), Accrington Road, Blackburn.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.