As Dean Burnett says in the Guardian today:
every year, much of the media become fixated on a specific day – the third Monday in January – as the most depressing of the year. It has become known as Blue Monday.
This silly claim comes from a ludicrous equation that calculates "debt", "motivation", "weather", "need to take action" and other arbitrary variables that are impossible to quantify and largely incompatible.
He adds:
Its creator, Dr Cliff Arnall, devised it for a travel firm. He has since admitted that it is meaningless (without actually saying it's wrong).
In today's Mail, Luke Sakeld also writes about Blue Monday:
It has been suggested that the concept of ‘Blue Monday’ was based on junk science drummed up by a travel company as a clever ploy to have us booking holidays to sunnier climes.
But this comes halfway through the article - after many sentences which clearly suggest Blue Monday is a genuine thing. The spur this year appears to be a press release from Anglian Home Improvements, which may just have an ulterior motive for suggesting natural light and windows can improve a person's mood.
The headline on today's article is:
However, the sheer emptiness of Blue Monday - and the laziness of the 'journalism' - is revealed by this:
Yes, that's the 'today is Blue Monday' article, based on the same press release, but written by Sean O'Hare, that the Mail published last week.
It said :
it comes as little surprise that today is said by experts to be the most depressing day of the year.
Depressing, indeed.
Ben Goldacre's excellent article - from 2006 - on the background to Blue Monday is worth reading.
(hat-tip to Edward)
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