This morning, while looking through my YouTube feed during breakfast I came across an upload of the Air France swing ad from early in 2015. I remember seeing this ad fairly frequently in ’15 and ’16 when I was in Europe, the tune in particular that was used for that ad is something that I remember hearing on a regular basis for about a year or so. Today though, listening to it again it felt like watching something from another time.

One thing as a historian that often seems to get debated in my field is chronology, how we define specific periods of time as distinct from others. The basic way to do this is by years––decades, centuries, and millennia––but those designations often feel artificial when discussing social or cultural phenomena that seem to fit one century but creep into another. Because of this, there’s been a trend in academic historiography (the history of writing history) of referring to “the long x century” in order to compensate for that complication. This is something which I’ll admit really annoys me, I suppose because it feels overused. I personally try to avoid it, often writing in a close focus more about generations than decades or centuries. Yet watching that Air France ad from 2015, before Brexit and Trumpism, before COVID, the idea that we are in a new decade feels very natural to me.

Generally, I’d say major moments in our history are what force us into a new decade or a new century. In the past I’ve argued that in some ways humanity as a whole didn’t begin to really live in the 20th century until World War I forced our forbearers to rethink their world. Likewise, I’ve often thought that the 21st century began not on New Year’s Day 2000 but on 9/11. The 21st century has been marked by generational wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the consequences of which we will be dealing with for generations to come, and by a new sort of fear of what dangers lie in wait.

The 2020s began with COVID, with that boogeyman that has left humanity battered and bruised, and that has left at least 2.6 million people dead globally. Our sensibilities from the 2010s, a strange combination of the optimism of a world recovering from the Recession mingled with the reactionary fear and anger that fueled a rise in divisive nationalistic politics in many countries remain, but feel somewhat out of place in our current time. We are left with some lasting images of those two sensibilities, yet reshaped in the image of our new time. The 2020s offer us a renewed sense of urgency and uncertainty. COVID has shown us that we are unprepared for a global catastrophe, our window to slow the effects of climate change is closing, and ideas that seemed untouchable and resolute a decade ago, like the doors of the US Capitol, have been broken down.

We have an uncertain future ahead of us, and like any new decade, we can choose how we will move ahead. That Air France ad and all the emotions I feel when seeing it, the nostalgia for what were for me the good times of 2015 and 2016, are now in the past. Looking at it again, it feels to me like something very truly from another decade, from another time, familiar and recent, but distinct from today. The 2020s are an unknown future for us, they could turn out to be a wonderful time in human history, or the troubles and trials of recent years brought into extreme focus with the pandemic could set the tune for the next few years to come.

Welcome to the 2020s!