A New Decade, or is it?
Victoria (Viki) Bennett
Business | Strategy | Marketing | Crowdfunding | QEII Platinum Jubilee Medal Recipient
As it comes to year-end, it’s been causing a huge dilemma, on 31st December 2019, is it the end of the decade or do we have another year to wait?
Marketers and historians tend to lump trends and attitudes as the 80s or 90s. We talk about the years starting 1990 to 1999 as the 90s. The 90s were characterised by multiculturism, alternative media, grunge music, raves and hip hop. all aided by cable and the world wide web. We saw a thaw in the Cold War and the dot com bubble. It is a convenient way to view the changes in history, many that we can’t see over a month or a year, but changes that need 10 years and even generations. Even with technology speeding up the rate of change, (honestly did you know about Tik Toks this time last year?) there are similarities that track over years and changes that still take years to shine through in the majority.
Based on that sound evidence, why we all talk of decades as 60s, 70s and get unsure whether to call the 00s the noughties or not, then welcome to the new decade! However, for calendarists, and there really are a thing, although they sound like the Susie Dent foil to the Jimmy Carr, marketers. (BTW if you don’t get this analogy you need to search YouTube for 8 out of 10 Cats does Countdown, and whether I sort out your decade confusion, reading this article will be worth it just for that gem). Back to the calendarists, if we look at the start of it all, the switch from B.C. to A.D. there is no year 0. You can blame the Venerable Bede, who in 731 AD, determined the year before 1 AD was 1 BC. You are straight into year one, so unless the first decade is only 9 years long, then decades start in the 01s, or in our case 2021?
Have I made it any clearer, probably not, personally, I think we should probably start the decade on 1st January 2021. If you follow that logic, then we should have celebrated the new millennium on 1st January 2001. But, in future years the decade will be seen to run 2020-2029. What do you think? Would welcome your comments and votes below.