Each year
around this time, the internet starts going abuzz with warnings about the
dreaded "Blue Monday," the so-called most depressing day of the year.
Where did the Blue Monday concept originate, and is it a real phenomenon?
A quick
internet search will reveal that today, the 21st of January, is supposedly Blue
Monday, the worst day of the year, when doom and gloom govern the general mood.
Blue Monday
does not fall on the same date each year, but it has to be a Monday (of
course), and it has to be in January, and it is usually the third Monday of the
first month of the year.
Truth be
told, today, as I write this article, I am not in the best of shapes. Fighting
off a stubborn and painful cold, stressed by pressing deadlines, and worried
about the challenges that the week ahead may present, I am tempted to say that
the Blue Monday label is fitting for a day like today.
But then
again, I had the flu
last week as well, and stress-inducing deadlines are a common occurrence in my
line of work, so why not call every less-than-perfect Monday a "Blue"
Monday? What makes today so uniquely gloomy? Or perhaps a better question would
be: "Is the third Monday of January truly the gloomiest day of the
year?"
In this
Spotlight feature, we find out where the concept of Blue Monday originated, how
this date is calculated, and whether or not there is any truth to the idea.
A forgotten marketing campaign
According to
reports from various online sources, Blue Monday originated with
psychologist Cliff Arnall in 2005, when he came up with the concept as part of
a marketing campaign for the now-defunct company Sky Travel.
In order
to determine which day in January Blue Monday would fall on each year, Arnall
came up with a complex formula that takes into account a variety
of factors, including: weather, level of debt, monthly salary, time elapsed
since Christmas, how long a person has failed to keep their New Year's
resolutions, motivational levels, and need to take action.
The premise
is that the gloomiest day of the year would be marked by bad weather, guilt
over not being able to keep up with the goals set for the year, money worries,
and the contrast between the recent holiday cheer and the harsh return to
mundane reality.
While all of
these variables may seem like valid factors when it comes to calculating the
worst day of the year, specialists have pointed out, time and again, that these
variables are impossible to determine, making the equation utterly unscientific.
There is no
way to measure "time since failure to keep New Year's resolution" for
every single person on the planet, and January weather is vastly different
among countries and continents.
In fact, as I
write this, the weather in New York is -14°C (7°F), but in Brighton, United
Kingdom — where the Medical News Today office is based — we are enjoying
a balmy 5°C (41°F), while the inhabitants of Sydney, Australia are bracing for
an "intense hot spell."
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