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
Sky Travel was first launched on 3 October 1994 (and later in 2003 relaunched as Sky Travel Shop) and showed extensive programmes about travel, adverts for travel agencies, and documentaries, with Sky Travel Shop being the adverts for travel ag ...
, 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.
Scientists have dismissed the idea as baseless
pseudoscience
Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable clai ...
.
History
This date was published in a press release under the name of Cliff Arnall, who was at the time a tutor at the Centre for Lifelong Learning, a Further Education centre attached to
Cardiff University. ''
Guardian'' columnist
Ben Goldacre
Ben Michael Goldacre (born 20 May 1974) is a British physician, academic and science writer. He is the first Bennett Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine and director of the Bennett Institute for Applied Data Science at the University of Oxford ...
reported that the press release was delivered substantially pre-written to a number of academics via
public relations
Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing and disseminating information from an individual or an organization (such as a business, government agency, or a nonprofit organization) to the public in order to influence their perception. ...
agency
Porter Novelli, along with an offer of money to those who offered to put their names to it.
A statement later printed in the ''Guardian'' sought to distance leaders of Cardiff University from Arnall: "Cardiff University has asked us to point out that Cliff Arnall . . . was a former part-time tutor at the university but left in February."
Variations of the story have been repeatedly reused by other companies in press releases, with 2014 seeing Blue Monday invoked by legal firms and retailers of bottled water and alcoholic drinks.
Some versions of the story purport to analyse trends in
social media
Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social medi ...
posts to calculate the date.
In 2018, Arnall told a reporter at the ''
Independent
Independent or Independents may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups
* Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s
* Independ ...
'' newspaper that it was "never his intention to make the day sound negative", but rather "to inspire people to take action and make bold life decisions". It was also reported that he was working with
Virgin Atlantic
Virgin Atlantic, a trading name of Virgin Atlantic Airways Limited and Virgin Atlantic International Limited, is a British airline with its head office in Crawley, England. The airline was established in 1984 as British Atlantic Airways, and ...
and
Virgin Holidays, having "made it his mission to challenge some of the negative news associated with January and to debunk the melancholic mind-set of 'Blue Monday'".
Date
The date is generally reported as falling on the third Monday in January,
but also on the second or fourth Monday.
The first such date declared was 24 January in 2005 as part of a Sky Travel press release.
Calculation
The formula uses many factors, including: weather conditions, debt level (the difference between debt accumulated and ability to pay), time since Christmas, time since new year’s resolutions have been broken, low motivational levels, and the feeling of a need to take action. One relationship used by Arnall in 2006 was:
:
where Tt = travel time; D = delays; C = time spent on cultural activities; R = time spent relaxing; ZZ = time spent sleeping; St = time spent in a state of stress; P = time spent packing; Pr = time spent in preparation.
Units of measurement
A unit of measurement is a definite magnitude of a quantity, defined and adopted by convention or by law, that is used as a standard for measurement of the same kind of quantity. Any other quantity of that kind can be expressed as a multi ...
are not defined; as all the factors involve time,
dimensional analysis
In engineering and science, dimensional analysis is the analysis of the relationships between different physical quantities by identifying their base quantities (such as length, mass, time, and electric current) and units of measure (such as mi ...
of the "formula" shows that it violates the fundamental property of
dimensional homogeneity and is thus meaningless.
The 2005 press release
and a 2009 press release
used a different formula:
:
where W=weather, D=debt, d=monthly salary, T=time since Christmas, Q=time since the failure of new year's resolutions, M=low motivational levels, and N
a=the feeling of a need to take action. Again, no units were defined; the lack of any explanation for what is meant by "weather" and "low motivational levels" means the dimensional homogeneity of the resulting formula cannot be assessed or verified, rendering it similarly meaningless.
Ben Goldacre
Ben Michael Goldacre (born 20 May 1974) is a British physician, academic and science writer. He is the first Bennett Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine and director of the Bennett Institute for Applied Data Science at the University of Oxford ...
has observed that the equations "fail even to make mathematical sense on their own terms", pointing out that under Arnall's original equation, packing for ten hours and preparing for 40 will always guarantee a good holiday, and that "you can have an infinitely good weekend by staying at home and cutting your travel time to zero".
Dean Burnett, a neuroscientist who has worked in the psychology department of Cardiff University, has described the work as "farcical", with "nonsensical measurements".
In 2016, Arnall claimed to have attempted to "overturn" his "theory" by visiting the
Canary Islands; his claim was publicised by the Canary Islands Tourism Board
Happiest day
Arnall also says, in a press release commissioned by
Wall's ice cream Wall's is formerly an ice cream and meat products brand, now split into two businesses:
*Wall's (ice cream), a brand owned by Unilever that makes ice cream
*Wall's (meat)
Wall's is a brand of meat products in the United Kingdom, best known for i ...
, that he has calculated the happiest day of the year – in 2005, 24 June, in 2006, 23 June, in 2008, 20 June and in 2010, 18 June.
So far, this date has fallen close to
Midsummer
Midsummer is a celebration of the season of summer usually held at a date around the summer solstice. It has pagan pre-Christian roots in Europe.
The undivided Christian Church designated June 24 as the feast day of the early Christian martyr ...
in the Northern Hemisphere (June 21 to 24).
References
External links
* BBC pages referencing Blue Monday
200520092012* {{cite news, url=https://posabilitymagazine.co.uk/blue-monday-is-bad-and-you-shouldnt-feel-bad-about-ignoring-it/, title=Blue Monday is bad and you shouldn't feel bad about ignoring it, last=Tulloch, first=Rosalind, date=20 January 2020, work=PosAbility Magazine, access-date=20 January 2020
2000s neologisms
Holidays and observances by scheduling (nth weekday of the month)
January observances
Monday
Pseudoscience
Unofficial observances