On New Year’s Eve, 999 A.D., it was widely believed that the world would end the next morning.
Arguably, it did, with the adoption of Christianity in Scandinavia and Hungary and the invention of gunpowder in China. But the drastic change most dreaded and others perhaps hoped the year 1000 would bring — the irresistible, irrefutable, apocalyptic cessation of all that had been — never came to pass.
Having learnt little from the experience of their forebears, denizens of the computerized 20th century looked over the precipice into the 21st with similar expectations. The new expiration date was New Year’s Day, 2000. January 1st came and went. Clocks kept ticking, lights stayed on, ATMs dispensed their bills uninterrupted…
The relief was as palpable as the doomsday scenario was suddenly laughable — but there was a disappointed edge to our sighs, and wistfulness in our laughter. Because we know — deep down we know — that the end of the world means a new beginning, and we could all use a fresh start.
Alarming numbers of fundamentalists foment war in the hope and belief that militaristic action will hasten Armageddon; the end of this pissant earthly life and the beginning of a divine, heavenly existence for those of their religious persuasion, of eternal damnation for the rest of us. To me, Armageddon is Ragnarök — the End of the World with no chance of rebirth or redemption — but then, I’m a pagan. I can’t conceive of the destruction of our planet as a good thing for anybody. But I get where they’re coming from, this branch of the religious right. They want change. Not slow, inevitable, invisible change. They want swift, all-encompassing, wipe-the-slate clean change.
And who doesn’t? Haven’t we all huddled together as the lightning ripped the dark air asunder and the thunder shook our bones, only to step out under the rainbow into a world reborn? Millennia may come and go, astrological ages may wax and wane, empires fall, civilizations vanish, the continents drift apart — but within these massive sweeps of time, there are glorious moments that the turn the tide, and surely this is one of them.
Could be we’ll wake up on Wednesday, and it’ll be life as usual. But I sit here at Summer’s End, gazing across Hallow-tide into the New Year… Ragnarök or the rainbow… it looks like the end of the world, either way.