Blue Monday (date)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article may not meet the general notability guideline. Please help to establish notability by adding reliable, secondary sources about the topic. If notability cannot be established, the article is likely to be merged or deleted. (February 2009)

Blue Monday is a name given to a date stated, as part of a publicity campaign by Sky Travel, to be the most depressing day of the year. It is the common name used by people in the entertainment industry to refer to Mondays that are not long weekends because they are generally slow and it is also a common code word for musicians and other enetertainment industry workers because they generally have Mondays off of work and can go out and party and jam on blues tunes. The Blue Monday Parties would generally have many famous musicians in the room all at once. ^[1]

This date was published in a press release under the name of Cliff Arnall, at the time a tutor at the Centre for Lifelong Learning, a Further Education centre attached to Cardiff University. Guardian columnist Dr Ben Goldacre reported that the press release was delivered substantially pre-written to a number of academics by Public Relations agency Porter Novelli, who offered them money to put their names to it.^[2] The Guardian later printed a statement from Cardiff University distancing themselves 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."^[3]

According to a press release by a mental health charity^[4], the formula is:

where weather=W, debt=d, time since Christmas=T, time since failing our new year’s resolutions=Q, low motivational levels=M and the feeling of a need to take action=N_a. 'D' is not defined in the release, nor are units.

Arnall says the date was calculated by using many factors, including: weather conditions, debt level (the difference between debt accumulated and our ability to pay), time since Christmas, time since failing our new year’s resolutions, low motivational levels and feeling of a need to take action. Writing about the calculation, Goldacre stated: ... the fact is that Cliff Arnall's equations ... fail even to make mathematical sense on their own terms.^[2]

This date typically falls on the Monday of the last full week of January. The date was stated to be 24 January in 2005,^[5] 23 January in 2006,^[6] 22 January in 2007,^[7] 21 January in 2008,^[8] and 19 January in 2009.^[9]

Mr Arnall also says, in a press release commissioned by Wall's ice cream,^[10] that he has calculated the happiest day of the year - in 2005, 24 June,^[11] in 2006, 23 June,^[12], in 2008 20 June^[13] and in 2009 19 June^[14]. So far, this date has fallen close to Midsummer.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• BBC pages referencing Blue Monday 2005 2009
• AJC page for Blue Monday
• Orange news discussion on Blue Monday