An article at Astronomy Answers points out that there is nothing astronomically special about the Mayan calendar end-date - and I agree wholeheartedly. Not only are there no special or unusual alignments happening in our galaxy, even if there were, I doubt they could affect anything.
They state that following are all false:
The Sun is then in conjunction with the intersection of the ecliptic and the Milky Way for the first time in 26,000 years.
The Sun is then in conjunction with the center of the Milky Way for the first time in 26,000 years.
The vernal equinox then crosses the center line of the Milky Way for the first time in 26,000 years.
These conjunctions happen at sunrise.
The planets are then in remarkable positions.
We cross the plane of the Milky Way to the other side then.
The Mayas knew the precession of the equinoxes and knew that five times the period of 13 baktuns of the Long Count was equal to the period of the precession of the equinoxes.
The Mayas designed their calendar just so that the Long Count would restart on 21 December 2012, because they knew that that would be a special day.
The Mayas used amazingly accurate astronomical knowledge to make their calendar, and that is why even nowadays special things happen in the sky when the date in their calendar is round.
The only part of the article I disagree with is:
To predict the date of the southern solstice accurately 2367 years into the future, the Central-Americans of the 4th century BC must have had records of accurate observations of solstices and equinoxes, but there are no indications whatsoever for this. I therefore think that the fact that the beginning of a new period in the Long Count in 2012 falls on the day of a solstice is a coincidence.
In my opinion, it is the year 2012 that is important, but they deliberately used the Winter Solstice date - the most grim day of the year - to let us know that something bad will occur.
