Blue Monday: how to prepare for the most depressing day of the year?

In 2025, Blue Monday celebrates its twentieth anniversary. This year, it falls on January 20, a day of seasonal depression based on a crazy equation that hits the mark. An opportunity to encourage consumption or to learn more about depression and push it away with more enthusiasm? It’s up to you!

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  Blue Monday: the most depressing day of the year, really?

Blue Monday: what is it?

With its name taken from the English “to feel blue”, Blue Monday speaks for itself. It designates the most depressing day of the year, the one when we have every reason to have the blues, at least according to the calculation proposed by Cliff Arnal. The British psychologist was asked in 2005 by the Sky Travel agency to determine when users are most likely to buy trips. Caught in the game, Cliff Arnal proposes a very eccentric equation: [W = (D-d)] x TQ : I x Na. Here’s how to decipher it in French: W = the weather, D = your debts after Christmas shopping, d = your January salary, T = the time since Christmas, Q = the time since you made your good resolutions , M = lack of motivation and Na = your need for change.

With so many unquantifiable parameters, there is no need to specify that this equation is impossible to solve! However, Blue Monday quickly conquered the media and social networks, to the point of establishing itself in the minds of people who believe in it. So much so that Cliff Arnal was forced to admit in 2010 that it was just a “comm stunt” and that there was no scientific rigor in this impossible calculation. For its part, the Sky Travel agency recognized that there was no eminent professor at Cardiff University either and that Cliff Arnal was not even a psychologist. Despite these denials, the marketing stunt consisting of encouraging Internet users to combat the gloom of Blue Monday by purchasing a sunny trip hit the mark. Twenty years later, Blue Monday is still very much alive, for better and for worse!

Why be wary of the marketing campaign around Blue Monday?

The goal of creating Blue Monday was simple: to encourage consumption. If you are depressed on the third Monday in January, buying a trip or any other item should help you get over the blues. The campaign is based on a human psychology mechanism. Shopping triggers a biochemical reaction in the brain by activating neurotransmitters and you feel better for a short while. Until guilt takes over due to a purchase that was unnecessary or too expensive for one’s means. To compensate for this drop in morale, it is then tempting to start again, to make a new purchase, in order to rediscover this feeling of well-being, even if temporary. The vicious circle begins and can have serious psychological and financial repercussions. In 2016, Cliff Arnal recognized the negative impact of his equation and began to campaign against the abolition of Blue Monday.

What are the positive points about the creation of Blue Monday?

Despite this risk for those who take Blue Monday at face value, Michel Lejoyeux, head of the psychiatry and addictology department at Bichat hospital in Paris, sees this eccentric marketing concept as an opportunity to highlight depressive disorders. . According to him, a person who suffers from depression without recognizing it can find “the opportunity to address your emotions without being in denial“. The eminent psychiatrist also points out that winter is a season prone to depression in the northern hemisphere due to the lack of sunlight, and not just on the third Monday in January. It is therefore important for people sensitive to seasonal mood disorders to go out and expose yourself as much as possible to sunlight or a light therapy device (CE standard) during the winter months. Also make sure to do activities that make you happy. counter the blues winter, not just shopping!