Before I plunge into a series of annual reviews, let me address that most burning of questions: Have we reached the end of the decade?
Some people will insist that we haven’t. My answer: We have reached the end of a decade.
A decade is any consecutive period of time lasting ten years. A decade is what you make it. A person is in the decade they would call their “thirties” from their 30th birthday until the day before their 40th. for example.
When people insist that the decade runs from the start of 2011 to the end of 2020, what they are actually referring to is the 202nd decade Anno Domini – a fixed sequence of decades counted from what was historically believed to be the birth of Jesus Christ. No one calls it the 202nd Decade of course, and few people even think about it. (And let’s not start on the differences between the Gregorian and Julian calendars.) It’s just another sequence that makes up a decade.
The decade most commonly known as “The 2010s” began on 1 January 2010 and ends on 31 December 2019, and when I refer to “Team of the Decade” and so forth in coming posts, that is the decade I will be referring to.