ABSTRACT

This chapter explores how the cult of anniversaries offers clues to the mentality that lies over the horizon as a sequel and competitor to postmodernism. The Great Calendar, upon which postmoderns rely to an unprecedented degree, holds a climax in store for everyone. Insofar as the bimillennium will involve an anniversary to end all anniversaries, it will eclipse expectations that have emerged during this age of anniversaries. The chapter expands suggestions made previously about harnessing anniversaries to bimillennial consciousness. It inquires into characteristics of that consciousness and assesses commemorations of the late 1990s. Cultural anniversaries will probably draw an ever-greater share of attention as the bimillennium approaches, for past politics has relatively little to say about a transition that affects all mankind. Europeans, with their predilection for cultural anniversaries, may adapt more readily to bimillennial exigencies than do Americans, who have preferred political anniversaries as an epitome of their civil religion.