I do not want to distract you from your Christmas shopping, but in case you haven’t heard, THE END OF THE WORLD IS FAST APPROACHING! In fact, it’s only a few days more than three years away.

If you haven’t heard, you just haven’t been paying attention. The upcoming oblivion was depicted in a major disaster movie last week, a best-selling book predicts the end and the History Channel has devoted a couple of episodes to the upcoming apocalypse.

The disaster movie “2012” has been proclaimed a disaster in its own right by critics, the book, “2012, the Return of Quetzalcoatl,” has been scourged by scholars, and the History Channel is, as usual, being ignored.

But, all are unanimous in predicting that the world will end on Dec. 21, 2012.

Predictions of the end of the world aren’t anything new, of course. We’ve gotten them regularly from visionaries, preachers and guys standing on street corners wearing placards. Those predictions are usually based on Holy Scripture or personal visions.

This one is different. It is based on the Mayan Calendar; The last day on the “long count” Mayan calendar, which covers some 5,126 years of human history, is Dec. 21, 2012.

The “long count” Mayan calendar has been around for over 1,000 years, and nobody has paid much attention to it, up until now.

For that matter, most people haven’t paid much attention to the Mayans.

For those of you in the latter group, Mayan civilization flourished from about 300 A.D. to 900 A.D. in Southern Mexico, Guatemala, Beliaz and parts of Honduras, an area historians refer to as MesoAmerica. The Mayans built impressive cities with stone towers and temples and were skillful mathematicians and astronomers, whose calendars were extremely accurate. For some reason, the civilization went into sharp decline about 900 A.D. and the cities were deserted, though a remnant of the civilization hung on in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula until extinguished by the Spanish in the 1500s.

Though the calendar ended on Dec. 21, 2012, the Mayans did not predict a great cataclysm on that date. They just stopped there.

Our modern day calendar prophets see plenty of cataclysms. The movie, “2012,” reportedly has 40 minutes of computer-generated earthquakes, tidal waves, fires, explosions, eruptions and other exceedingly scary scenes sandwiched into two hours of exceedingly stupid dialogue. The book foresees doomsday as do three others out this month.

The History Channel provides more of the same, bolstering the Mayan calendar with Indian legends and the writings of Nostradamus. Doomsayers love Nostradamus because his ponderous prophecies are so vague they could be predicting anything.

These doomsday predictions are going to get more numerous and shriller as we get nearer to Dec. 21, 2012. Remember the Y2K hysteria that accompanied the arrival of the new millennium in 2000. Computers would go completely awry. Financial records would be destroyed. Satellite positioning systems would malfunction and lost airplanes would fall out of the sky because they were out of fuel. The electrical grid would be disrupted causing massive blackouts, etc, etc. We may see that kind of stuff again.

One Mesoamerican .historian has said that the Mayans didn’t predict the end of the world and the current prophets foresee nothing but a way to make a quick buck.

So, why did the Mayan calendar end on Dec. 21, 2012.? Remember, we don’t know why Mayan society went into a sudden decline around 900 A.D. Some experts think it may have been famine caused by drought and worn-out soil.

Maybe the calendar makers had to stop staying in that tower, charting the stars, and go down to earth to root around for something to eat.

Thus, the calendar ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.

Glenn Sumpter is a former editor of the Richmond County Daily Journal.