Insofar as the birth of Jesus can be dated with any reliability, it probably occurred four years before Anno Domini (“The year of our Lord”) as it’s known in Vatican City. Sometime in the last 15-20 years, as the world has become more politically correct, AD has transmuted to “Common Era”, in tacit acknowledgement that it is the most commonly followed calendar-era.
Many countries use official eras other than CE. The Islamic Republics date from the Hejira (AH). India has its Saka Era. The Japanese hybrid changes eras to commemorate the coronation of the ruling monarch. Israel uses the Jewish calendar.
But these differences are usually footnotes in official documents with the CE equivalent written alongside. Business is generally conducted according to the Gregorian Calendar with its 12 months and its leap years. The synchronisation of global dating systems is perhaps, the clearest sign of how inextricably different cultures are linked. Utter confusion often resulted earlier when neighbouring countries talked different dates.
Napoleon won several battles in the lead up to Austerlitz because Czarist Russia’s Julian calendar was 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar of Austria and Prussia. Thus, military coordination amongst Napoleon’s allied enemies was sorely lacking. In fact, the “October Revolution” started on November 7, 1917 CE for that same reason.
The 21st century (which is also the 15th century and the 58th ) cannot afford such discombobulation. Times need to be worked out to micro-seconds to guarantee servers in Tuvalu can talk to servers in London and New York and to ensure that telecom companies agree on billing and revenue-shares of ISD calls. It doesn’t matter what is set as the universal time and date, so long as everyone is agreed that it is the universal time and date.
As a result, an ever-increasing proportion of humanity arbitrarily celebrates New Year on January 1. Substantial chunks of it also celebrate other New Years. There is no harm in that. Everybody needs holidays and the occasion doesn’t matter, so long as people are agreed that there should be a holiday.
From the business perspective, synchronicity lends welcome predictability. Consumer-dependent businesses plan for surges in activity during the New Year period, along with surges during various regional events like Diwali, Thanksgiving, Chinese New Year, Cherryblossom Festival, etc. This makes inventory management, hiring of temporary staff, etc, much easier.
Preliminary reports suggest that retail sales jumped in the fortnight preceding New Year. One can read too much into retail numbers but there is a definite linkage there to sentiment and confidence. If people around the world are loosening their belts a notch or two, they probably feel 2010 will be better than 2009.
The renewal of collective confidence is a necessary, if insufficient condition, for the global economy to bootstrap itself out of trouble in 2010. It will not be enough if various regions refuse to cooperate with other regions. Problems like poverty, Islamic Jihad, climate change, cannot be tackled without global consensus.
Whether it’s Huntingdon’s Clash of Civilisations or disagreements about emission reduction, it’s all too easy to get riled up about the differences between cultures and regions. It’s also very easy to overlook the fact that all those cultures have to ultimately share living space and resources within the same ecosystem.
The synchronisation of calendars shows that common ground can be found and agreements reached, without bloodshed or endless bickering, when the outcomes are seen by all parties as win-win. Unfortunately, many areas of global disagreement are viewed as irreconcilable, or zero-sum, rather than win-win. It’s up to humanity to find less adversarial ways to approach those issues. Let’s hope some progress is made in 2010.
