Dwain Northey (Gen X)

They Already Won: The Calendar Doesn’t Lie

Years ago, I heard a comedian making fun of Christianity and the endless efforts by some believers to “spread the Gospel to the whole world.” His punchline was simple.

“Are you kidding? You’ve already won.”

At first, it got a laugh.

The older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve realized it was also historically accurate.

When I was a kid, BC meant Before Christ, and AD meant After Death—or at least that’s what I believed. Even then, it never made much sense to me. Christians were always telling me that Jesus didn’t stay dead; he rose from the dead. So why divide history into “Before Christ” and “After Death” if the whole point of Christianity is that death wasn’t the end of the story?

Years later, I learned that AD doesn’t mean “After Death” at all. It stands for the Latin Anno Domini—“In the Year of Our Lord.” The calendar isn’t counting from the crucifixion but from the traditional year of Jesus’ birth.

Modern historians know the dating is probably off by several years. Ironically, Jesus was almost certainly born Before Christ.

History has a wonderful sense of humor.

In recent decades, scholars and publishers have increasingly adopted BCE (Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era). Personally, I don’t have a problem with the terminology. It’s intended to be religiously neutral in an increasingly diverse world.

But here’s the amusing part.

Changing the labels doesn’t change the reference point.

Whether you call it AD or CE…

Year One is still Year One.

The entire globe is still measuring time from the traditionally accepted birth of a Jewish preacher from an obscure Roman province in the Middle East.

Think about that for a moment.

No civilization decided history should begin with the birth of Moses.

Not Abraham.

Not Muhammad.

Not Buddha.

Not Julius Caesar.

Not Alexander the Great.

Not even the founding of Rome.

Instead, nearly every passport, legal document, scientific paper, business contract, archaeological report, and space mission on Earth is dated according to the traditional birth year of Jesus.

That is an astonishing level of cultural influence.

What’s even more remarkable is that this didn’t happen overnight.

The Christian movement began as a tiny, often persecuted sect in the Roman Empire. Three centuries after the crucifixion, Constantine the Great embraced Christianity and helped move it from the margins of society toward the center of imperial life. The cross—once an instrument of execution—became the defining symbol of the faith.

But Constantine didn’t invent the calendar.

That came roughly two centuries later.

In the sixth century, about 500 years after the death—and, according to Christian belief, the resurrection—of Jesus, a monk named Dionysius Exiguus proposed a new way of numbering years. Instead of counting from the reign of emperors or the legendary founding of Rome, he suggested counting from the birth of Christ.

Think about how extraordinary that is.

Five centuries after the events themselves, a religion that had begun with a handful of followers in an obscure corner of the Middle East had become influential enough that its central figure became history’s universal reference point.

That system spread throughout Christian Europe. Then European exploration, trade, diplomacy, colonialism, science, and eventually globalization carried that calendar around the world.

Today, nations with every imaginable religion—and many with no official religion at all—still use it.

Centuries later, we changed the initials from AD to CE in many academic settings.

It’s rather like repainting the house while leaving the foundation untouched.

The labels changed.

The foundation didn’t.

Some critics object that using CE somehow erases Christianity.

Others insist everyone should abandon AD entirely.

Personally, I think both sides overlook the historical irony.

You can rename the calendar all you want.

You can change the initials.

You can make them as religiously neutral as possible.

But you’re still counting from exactly the same moment in history.

That’s the point the comedian was making.

Christians trying to spread Christianity?

From a historical perspective, they accomplished something far more remarkable.

Their faith became so culturally influential that, centuries after its founder lived, died, and—according to Christian belief—rose again, much of humanity agreed to reset the calendar around his birth.

Whether you’re a Christian, a Muslim, a Jew, a Hindu, a Buddhist, an atheist, or someone who has never set foot inside a church, every time you write the date, you’re participating in a system whose starting point was chosen because of Jesus of Nazareth.

History doesn’t offer many examples of influence on that scale.

You don’t have to share the belief to acknowledge the impact.

The calendar already did.