Apart from the champagne and the de rigueur Pulp song, what I'm most looking forward to is the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to participate in the imminent end of the present temporal world, the final destruction of the unrighteous in a purging holocaust engulfing the Earth, and the resurrection of the righteous to a purified world of bliss. Yep, it's all go around my way tonight.
If, however, the Apocalyptic Brigade is having a quiet night in and not bothering with the purging holocaust stuff, it will come as no great surprise. From the failure of Jesus's own prediction for an apocalypse within his own generation to the embarrassed mutterings of cult followers as they climb down from yet another mountain top to put their end-is-nigh placards back in storage, we've had over 2,000 years to acquaint ourselves with the concept of Millennium Disappointment.
In the course of writing a series of columns on Millennium Matters for this paper this year, I embarked on a fantastic voyage into the Far Side of human thought and action. Starting with the premise that the millennium has about as much relevance as your car's odometer turning over to 2000, it was more than a bit bemusing to sift through reams of information about the "Millennium as Apocalypse". Apart from the common or garden nutters who were getting tremulous at the prospect of the world ending, there was also a fascinating rogue's gallery of End Timers, Christian Fundamentalists and Ufologists (they'll still be with us next year unfortunately).
The highlights included the old school heretical apocalyptic cult, the Montanists (party trick: frenzied behaviour at the thought of the new Jerusalem descending from the Heavens); the self-explanatory group known as the Roving Flagellants (which is also the name of a nightclub in Berlin, funnily enough); Nostradamus; the Millerites - founder William Miller specifically predicted the world would end on March 21st, 1844, and when it didn't, he proclaimed himself to be "disappointed"; the Aetherius Society (formed by a London taxi driver in 1955) who told us that they and they alone had prevented apocalypse by storing thousands of hours of prayer in special "radionic batteries" which release spiritual energy in times of crisis.
My favourites were the Raelians, who merged New Age and Doomsday beliefs and practised "sensual meditations" to banish cult members's sense of Judaeo-Christian guilt. Such was the "sensual" aspect of these meditations that, astonishingly, female members would often end up pregnant. There is only so much you can take of deranged people masquerading as prophets and, a few months in, I switched from "The Millennium as Apocalypse" to "The Millennium as Calendrics" after reading Stephen Jay Gould's excellent book, Questioning The Millennium. The completion of a secular period of 1,000 years in human history, however, offered little respite from sheer human folly.
Starting with the "Millennium Tariff" - that curious notion that everything on the night (from taxis to a Barbra Streisand concert in Las Vegas) would be 10 to 15 times dearer - it soon became quite clear that a funny thing happened on the way to the millennium: hotels, restaurants, bars and clubs were basing their prices as if we would be partying like it was our last night on Earth or, at the very least, travelling to some exotic destination to partake of exotic food and drink. Mooted admission prices of £75 into a place that is usually known as your "local", coupled with naked greed being displayed by all the ancillary entertainment services, has meant that most people will be passing on the "something special" idea (as of yesterday, 72 per cent of Americans and 78 per cent of all British people say they have nothing planned for tonight and will be busy Y2Kocooning themselves at home).
The commercialisation of the event ("anyone for the last of the Millennium tea towels") has rendered it practically redundant.
The most tedious story of the millennium, by a country mile, was Y2K. Millenarian apocalypse was soon replaced by technological apocalypse as we had to read yet another article on how some computers would read tomorrow's date as 1900 instead of 2000 and hence everything from cash dispensers and air traffic control systems to microwaves and lifts (not forgetting those pesky nuclear weapons) could potentially malfunction. The worst case scenario is that as dawn breaks over the Pacific tomorrow and spreads across the globe, up to 50,000 mainframes will crash in succession, causing economic, political and social chaos.
While we still don't know exactly how Y2K will pan out, experts say they have most everything under control (famous last words?). One Y2K spin-off (and, by the way, there are still people who believe that it's all a Jewish/Russian/Vatican/CIA plot to destablise the world and usher in a new order) was the huge growth in (where else) the US in the survivalist movement. These TEOTWAWKIs (The End Of The World As We Know It) have been busy all year stockpiling dried foods, medical supplies and buying generators and weapons. Secular millennarianism at its best.
A quick tour around the world's major cities, courtesy of the Internet, shows that, as suspected, New York (they've a major bash in Times Square), Paris (the Eiffel tower will be "laying" a giant egg and the river Seine is being perfumed - how cool is that) and London (they're setting the Thames on fire and opening the Dome) slightly have the edge on Dublin, where we are getting a candle and a free concert. Well done, Millennium Committee.
Amid all the madness, there was some light relief about where the sun will rise first tomorrow. The Chatham Islands, some 500 miles east of New Zealand, did their sums years ago and claimed the tourist-friendly title of being the first landmass to welcome in the first dawn. However, this is being disputed by those brass neck citizens of the nearby Kiribati Islands who have unilaterally decided to "move" their islands a few miles across the International Date Line, to claim the first sunrise.
All in all, writing the column was a fabulous roller-coaster ride through history, religion, politics and downright stupidity. Whatever you get up to this New Year's Eve, please realise that it can't hold a millennium candle to what all the nutters, weirdos, End Timers, Y2K freaks and religious fundamentalists will be getting up to.
Me, I'll be hiding under the bed.