Today, believe it or not, is Blue Monday. Who thinks of these things?!

Perhaps I’m the only person on the planet who hasn’t known about the somewhat off-putting concept of Blue Monday for the past 18 years, but a casual viewing of the captioned news at the gym yesterday morning, while hard at work cycling (well, I was on the cycle at any rate), brought me up to speed.  It turns out that the third Monday of January has been proclaimed the most depressing day of the year!!

Apparently – get this – a UK travel company came up with the notion of honouring this dismal and questionable factoid in 2005 by proclaiming it Blue Monday, and for some reason this was deemed of sufficient interest and credibility to be discussed as a news item on CTV News yesterday.  We haven’t had anything remotely approaching a slow news day in years now, so all I can imagine is that the news announcers needed a break from reporting on all the depressing news.  So instead they decided to tell everyone about the most depressing day of the year!

According to Wikipedia:

Blue Monday is the name given to a day in January (typically the third Monday of the month) said by a UK travel company, Sky Travel, to be the most depressing day of the year. The concept was first published in a 2005 press release from the company, which claimed to have calculated the date using an “equation”. It takes into account weather conditions and thus only applies to the Northern Hemisphere. Psychologist Cliff Arnall, who coined the day ‘Blue Monday’ came up with a formula that factors in general emotions arising after Christmas, lots of money being spent, the change of cold weather amongst other factors.

Notice that there is no discussion of why this travel company might have thought this worthy of a major announcement, such as perhaps improving your one-day-in-January depression by reserving your spot on one of their trips.  But that can’t be it, can it? They know we’re depressed due to all that money we’ve just spent, so surely they wouldn’t want to encourage us to spend more!  If they were trying to start a national or international campaign in aid of mental health, that would have been laudable, but mention of mental health doesn’t seem to be front and center – although, to be fair, mental health was mentioned in the CTV News piece.

If we’re going to choose the most depressing day of the year, it definitely matters where you live; weather does play a role.  However, I’m pretty sure that there are some kids who would choose the first day of school as the most depressing day of the year rather than the middle of January.  People who spend Christmas alone may find that the most depressing day of the year … or on the other hand may find it one of the most relaxing.  Regardless, there is no doubt that Monday would get a strong vote for the day of the week, whichever time of year it falls in!

Then, of course, some people would undoubtedly be ready to celebrate being miserable regardless of the day of the week or the time of the year.

The fact that a travel company is given credit for starting the concept of Blue Monday fits in with the messaging we are bombarded with by marketers, telling us that buying their products will make us a lot happier. And more money to buy even more of these products helps, too.

All that marketing messaging, telling us we should strive to be happy all the time, really isn’t helpful.  It isn’t realistic and, if anything, helps lead to more depression over what ‘things’ we can’t have. Finding a little happiness – a few moments of joy when we stop and take the time to look for it – should be its own reward.  Of course, finding joy from an unexpected call from a long-time friend or seeing a new bird at your birdfeeder isn’t going to “grow the economy” or increase corporate profits, but it can help turn Blue Monday into a sunny Yellow Monday or a sparkling Pink Monday, or maybe a Raptors Red-and-Black Monday! Our happiness and well-being may well help the economy in a variety of ways, but that happiness and well-being should not be defined by marketing messages.

I’ll admit there’s a reason why I’ve reacting more strongly than one might expect to having learned about Blue Monday; today is not only apparently the most depressing day of the year, but also my birthday! [And also Martin Luther King Day in the U.S. this year, whose legacy is definitely worth honouring.]  I refuse to be depressed, I absolutely refuse.  Even with the unpleasant amounts of freezing rain outside at the moment.  After all, when the freezing rain (finally) stops and the sun comes out, think of how sparkly everything will be!! 😉