c. 2000 Religion News Service

(Andrew M. Greeley is a Roman Catholic priest, best-selling novelist and sociologist at the University of Chicago National Opinion Research Center. Check out his home page at http://www.agreeley.com or contact him via e-mail at agreel(at)aol.com.)

UNDATED _ Next year, God willing, I am going to have a millennium party to celebrate the real end of the 20th century and the second millennium.

The alleged millennium we just endured was a fake, a phony and, finally, a lie. The media created the illusion that a century begins at the beginning of the last year of the preceding century and a millennium begins on Jan. 1 of the last year of the last millennium.

In years to come people will laugh at this phony celebration. Having created the illusion, the media reinforced it by producing all kinds of phony lists of the best of the century and the best of the millennium, thus stirring up silly controversy.

Michael Jordan or Babe Ruth the best of the century? How does anyone decide that? Gutenberg or Luther the man of the millennium? It couldn’t be Columbus because he is politically incorrect.

Einstein the man of the century? Gimme a break! Middlebrow Time magazine pretends it’s highbrow and shows only how pseudo-intellectual it is. Nonsense, nonsense, nonsense.

Then, having created the hyperbole about this false millennium, the media ruin it for many people by scaring folks silly with the Y2K bug and the terrorism threat. In my own city, for example, the front pages of both newspapers screamed about terrorism. To the dismay of the luxury hotel and airline industries, most people hunkered down in their homes with their water bottles and battery lanterns.

Finally, in an orgy of self-congratulations, the media celebrated how wonderful was their coverage of the event all around the world.

For most folks, however, the nonevent was exactly that _ a nonevent.

What was it we were supposed to be celebrating? The end of the millennium _ indeed, the end of the second millennium. The second millennium since what? A visitor from outer space would have a hard time figuring that out, because it would be politically incorrect for the media to acknowledge it was supposed to be the 2000th anniversary of Jesus of Nazareth. It might offend non-Christians to mention him. ABC’s Cokie Roberts tried to mention Jesus from Rome and they cut her off.

Is it anti-religious not to mention the religious dimension of an important festival? Sure it is, but we’re so used to saying”Happy Holidays”instead of”Merry Christmas”that we take in stride the anti-religious bias that has been imposed on public life. (“Merry,”by the way, comes from an old Anglo-Saxon word that means”peaceful.”)

Eventually the word”Christmas”will be banned from public discourse. Maybe we can return to the name of the Roman festival and greet one another with the wish”A fertile saturnalia!” It will be harder to change the calendar so that we aren’t counting from the birth of Jesus (plus or minus five years or so). However, as was demonstrated last week, we can use the old calendar while hardly mentioning him.

The pope did pray during his broadcast from Rome. He is, however, part of the problem because he bought into the falsehood that we are now in the third millennium when in fact we are not, as he ought to know. I didn’t notice anyone else praying. Rather we ate and drank and danced and watched the fireworks even though more than 95 percent of Americans believe in God and evangelical candidates think there are votes to be gained by claiming their politics are directed by Jesus.

We reviewed the accomplishments and horrors of a century (or millennium) that isn’t over yet and indulged in prophecies about what was going to happen in the next hundred years, even though projections beyond the next six months are mere guesswork.

At my party next year, we’ll begin with a Eucharist to thank God for all the graces of our own years and the years before our own, celebrate the good things that have been piled up in the last century and millennium, express our sorrows for all the missed opportunities in our lives, and rededicate ourselves to making the world a better and more human place.

Then the eating and the drinking, the singing and the dancing, and the telling of tales.

DEA END GREELEY