Blue Monday: You need to know about the gloomiest day of the year

Monday in the third week of January has been infamous and feared for years. According to British psychologist Cliff Arnall, this is the day on which we collectively fall into mild depression. The days are still cold and dark, you have given up on your New Year’s resolutions, your bank account is an echoing well after the December holiday season and summer almost seems an abstract concept. It is therefore not surprising that this day has been renamed Blue Monday. Were it not that Blue Monday does not exist at all.

Ordinary marketing ploy

Que? No really. Blue Monday turns out to be nothing more than an ordinary marketing trick. Cliff Arnall was affiliated with Cardiff University, but he was bribed by a travel agent. After all, January is – in normal times – the perfect time to book the summer vacation to white beaches and turquoise seas. The PR agency of that travel agency therefore devised a formula to calculate the gloomiest day of the year. To give their press release some credibility, they asked several scientists to associate their names with that formula. Arnall took it in exchange for a hefty sum of money.

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Selfulfilling prophecy

Blue Monday is not completely innocent. There is a risk that this phenomenon will cause a self-fulfilling prophecy is becoming. If you hear often enough what a depressing month of January is, you will automatically believe in it. So don’t let yourself be talked into a bad day when not much is going on.

That does not mean, however, that it is not understandable if you now feel more gloomy than usual. To that dark month we can also add disturbing world news and a hopeless lockdown this year. At least try to talk about it as much as possible. Sulking alone can make you feel lonely. Knowing that you can fall back on loved ones and you’re not the only one struggling can just soften the sharp edges. Hang in there: it will automatically be summer again.