Blue Monday: Today is the Most Depressing Day of the Year… Maybe

Feeling a little down today? It might have to do with the fact that today is Blue Monday, the most depressing day of the year.

The third Monday of January is generally regarded as the saddest day of the year. The Christmas buzz is off, New Year’s resolutions are starting to fail, and the New Orleans Saints are out of the NFL playoffs. Add all of that on top of a few weeks of miserable weather and it’s easy to see why today is considered Blue Monday.

But the Daily Mail isn’t buying into the “junk science” of blue Monday. The Daily Mail report that psychologist Cliff Arnall invented the day in 2005 as part of a marketing campaign for a travel company.

Arnall admitted to the Guardian that the day is meaningless, but refused to admit that the science behind the idea was wrong. The pseudo-scientists claims that if you add in the economic situation you could consider today Red Monday, the saddest day in history. Arnall said:

“It is the combination of factors that make life right now particularly uncertain. There is threat of job redundancy and the cost of food and fuel are going up.”

What do you think? Is today the saddest day of the year? Or is Blue Monday just a marketing ploy to get people to buy airline tickets? In either case, here’s Fats Domino’s Blue Monday to cheer you up.