Sorry, but I might as well put it out there right at the start of this post: Blue Monday is a load of crap.
The notion that there’s a specific day in the year when we feel worse than others is pure hokum (yes, I did just want to use the word hokum. I like it).
If it’s all about the one day when we’ve got the least money, post-Christmas and New Year, and/or feel low, it could just as easily fall on a random Wednesday, or a Friday.
It also gives rise to the idea that ‘a bit of the blues’ and actual depression are the same thing i.e you can ‘snap out of it’ by Tuesday.
I’ll fess up and say that I’ve had bouts of genuine depression, and you feel more than ‘a bit blue’, you can’t ‘snap out of it’, and it can go on for months – rendering 24 Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays ‘blue’.
‘Blue Monday’ is nonsense – a cheap trick to make us all think we should feel a bit low on a particular day; a poor comparison to genuine mental health issues; and a commercial opportunity to sell us ‘feel good’ deals (Aldi and Lidl, from what I’ve seen so far).
There’s some truth in the fact that it helps charities like CALM and Mind gain some traction with their messages, but only for a moment, and it means they have to piggyback on a day that waters down real depression (people saying ‘oh, it’s such a depressing day’ etc) and other mental health issues.
Put it this way: if you can see off Blue Monday by having a staff pizza lunch, going to the gym, baking cookies, or ‘booking some key appointments’, you’re not blue – you’re just using a hashtag.
I’ll summarise neatly: Blue Monday is a load of bollocks.