The winter solstice of the year 2012 in the northern hemisphere will mark the culmination of a cycle spanning approximately 5,125 years in the ancient Maya calendar known as the Long Count. There is intense and growing speculation concerning the significance of this date among many New Age aficionados and others interested in Maya culture. Some mistakenly refer to the 21 December 2012, solstice date as the “end of the Maya calendar” and many suggest it will bring about a catastrophic destruction of the world and/or a radical renovation of human consciousness. In spite of a general lack of familiarity with Maya culture outside of the Maya homeland, several hundred Internet websites in dozens of languages and a growing corpus of books already focus on the subject, often venturing into outlandish conjecture concerning the date's implications. Investigation of the principal trends in the 2012 phenomenon reveals merely tangential connections to the realities of the Maya world and even these tenuous links at times expose gross misinterpretations of Maya culture by some associated with the movement. Contemporary Maya themselves have thus far contributed relatively little to the 2012 phenomenon since only a small number have had any prior exposure to the topic. The Long Count calendar that the 2012 date emerges from fell into disuse well before the arrival of the Spanish invaders in the sixteenth century and knowledge of its rediscovery by Western academics has reached few of today's Maya apart from the most educated.