Which brings me to one of my hobby horses:
We already agree that our calendar is wrong, off by anywhere from 2 to 16 years, depending on who’s doing the reckoning, and further in error because of the absence of a year zero.
The more fundamental point is that God did not intend us to mark His years by the birth of Jesus.
If He had intended this we would have a Biblical fixing of the date.
Further, the day of Jesus’ birth is unremarkable as all men are born.
However, very few return from the dead, that event is remarkable, and it is the defining moment of Christianity, the very moment of proof that his sacrifice was not in vain. And the Bible gives a precise reference for when this happened!
Clearly this was the date the calendar was supposed to start!
For extra points, this makes our calendar off by anywhere from 17 to 30 years. That makes this something like Holy Year 1988 to Holy Year 1975, giving us anywhere from 12 to 25 years to get our affairs in order before the real end of the millennium...
“That makes this something like Holy Year 1988 to Holy Year 1975”
Does this make me 16 again?
/crossing fingers
All that has been ironed out in recent years, and the calendar error has been fixed at approximately two years. By our calendar, Christ was born on September 29, 2 B.C. (The Feast of Tabernacles fell on 9-29 that year)
"...and further in error because of the absence of a year zero."
Did you have a hard time with algebra?
A year zero would really foul up our number system. Zero is a place, but not a year. It is the beginning of the first year, A.D. and the ending of the first year B.C. This makes the calendar work perfectly with our number system.