Talk:Blue Monday (date)

Untitled
I've had to make some edits to this article. Any basic search of the author of this supposed study does not produce any evidence he is a credible source. ecven the institution he used to work for is trying to distance itself from him, and have stated he was a part tinme tutor rather than a scientist as he likes to describe himself. http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2006/dec/16/badscience.uknews —Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.40.24.189 (talk) 17:07, 2 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I have had to make some edits to the article in response, so that it actually talks about the subject, rather than being a WP:COATRACK against Mr Arnell. MorganaFiolett (talk) 13:26, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

"claims"
I think the wikipedia style guide says to avoid using "claims" as a word for attributing a quote, since it unduly biases the reader against the quoted person. 76.118.217.245 (talk) 04:43, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Formula
I added the claimed formula, and it was removed as not making sense. This is not a mistake (on our part at least); see Ben Goldacre's quote in the article. AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 08:56, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

"Blue Monday" entry is a commercial advertisement and should be removed or explicitly presented as such
I have left the following note on the User talk:C3o page:

Blue Monday (date) nonsense
Why are you protecting this abuse of wikipedia? Do you yourself have a monetary interest in this article? Then you should not get involved, it'd be unethical. Otherwise read the offensive article and either remove it or leave it in the honest form, as an explicit advertisement. Wikipedia should not promote dishonesty.

 I hope that user:C3o will come to senses or someone will stop C3o's cover up action. Wlod (talk) 19:47, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

The date allegedly falls on the [Monday of the last week/ third Monday/etc.] of January
What's the source for this and who's doing the alleging? As far as I was aware, the date falls when Cliff Arnall decides it's time to get into the papers again. AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 15:46, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Notability?
As someone previously unfamiliar with this term until today, this article really doesn't establish the date's notability. This should be improved upon. nlapierre 16:50, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Deletion?
I'm proposing to undo the deletion notice unless someone can come up with a good reason to delete. The reason given to propose deletion, to quote: "Bullshit article about a bullshit piece of PR. Pathetic" is in my mind enough to undo the notice immediately. This comment does not even conform to Wikipedia standards of language.

The article does need some revision and restructuring and I will post my ideas soon. Also Dr Ben Goldacre has written another newspaper item yesterday which is relevant. Socialogically, I beleive the creation of mainly press inspired myths is an important part of our history. keoka 14:17, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

I have emailed Dr Goldacre to see if he wishes to make any comment on a revision and so will wait a day or so before I start on the article.

To answer two questions lower down, I am writing a revised introduction which will not name any commercial company in accordance with Wiki rules. Details can of course be found in the references.
 * Just a quick question here - which "Wiki rules" (I presume you mean Wikipedia policy) do you refer to? I can't immediately think of any reason why we shouldn't explicitly name the companies involved in creating this. --David Edgar (talk) 00:51, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

The reason why this article is important is that "Blue Monday" has gone viral and departed from its spurious origins. For better or worse, it has caught the imagination of the press and public on both sides of the Atlantic and cannot be ignored. Also we have a duty to set the record straight that there are no data to support the idea of any particularly "blue" day. The "formula" is of course total baloney which I will say in more discreet words ref: Goldacre

I have also gathered more references which I will put up here for discussion. keoka 00:03, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree. The page clearly states that it was a Sky marketing campaign so I see no reason to delete the page. There are enough external references to demonstrate that this is topic people are interested in, and so should be kept. --Deltaflux (talk) 09:04, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

New material I have a transcript of the BBC Radio4 programme 'More or Less' which is currently available as a podcast and 'Listen again' on the Radio4 website I've also found the No Pills website which has a list of activities for Cliff Arnall and a telephone number for enquiries. keoka 15:25, 24 January 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Keoka (talk • contribs)

Monday 24 Jan 2011

Devoster,

You've beaten me to undoing the deletion notice as I've just put up the following draft rewrite. I'll check out your revision, but I've got more to add anyway, particularly to the new Criticism section which will be virtually the old copy with the formula etc outof the way.

I would like to develop the idea of a nonsensical idea becoming viral, but if anyone has any thoughts please let me know keoka 22:26, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

partial rewrite
The concept of a "Blue Monday" appears to have originated as a particular day as part of a publicity campaign by a television travel channel at a time of low demand. It is said to be the most depressing day of the year.

This has been challenged, but the popular press has maintained the idea and it now appears to have become part of a social mythology independant of its origin.

Origin
The concept of a "Most Depressing Day" in January was proposed in a press release in 2006 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.

The web site NO PILLS credits Cliff Arnall, a Former lecturer in psychology and researcher with Cardiff University and Founder of NO PILLS, with the authorship of the Most Depressing Day and Happiest Day formula. This web site lists clients including Johnson & Johnson, DTZ, Revlon, Golley Slater, Hepworth Building Products, L'Oreal, BSW Timber and Norton Rose.

The Formula

 * $$\frac{[W + D-d] T^Q}{M N_a}$$

where W is weather, D is debt, d is January pay, T is time since Christmas, Q is time since failing a new year’s resolutions, M is low motivational levels, and Na is the feeling of a need to take action.

No units are stated and the denominator is not numerical so a valur for the formula cannot be calculated.

The BBC News item 'I don't like Monday 24 January' dated 19 January 2005 gives the formula for the day of misery as  1/8W+(D-d) 3/8xTQ MxNA W is weather, D is debt - minus the money (d) due on January's pay day - and T is the time since Christmas, Q is the period since the failure to quit a bad habit, M stands for general motivational levels and NA is the need to take action and do something about it. Again no units are given and the formula cannot give a value or result.

As an explanation the BBC item states: "Dr Arnalls calculated the effects of cold, wet and dark January weather after the cosiness of Christmas coupled with extra spending in the sales. He found 24 January was especially dangerous, coming a whole month after Christmas festivities. Any energy from the holiday had worn off by the third week of January, he said. By Monday, most people will have fallen off the wagon or abandoned the nicotine patches as they fail to keep New Year's resolutions. That compounds a sense of failure and knocks confidence needed to get through January." The BBC item adds: "The fact that the most depressing day fell on a Monday was not planned but a coincidence, he said."

Criticism
The Guardian newspaper 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.

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."

In the Dutch newspaper the Volkskrant klinisch clinical psychologyst Claudi Bockting of the University in Groningen (RUG) states that blue monday leads to deterioration of the word "Depression", and the suggestion to feel better by doing funny things is a false one for depressed people: it stimulates the feeling of being guilty for having a depression and feeling like a loser. You cannot resolve a depression in one day.

Incorrect date for 2010
The last full week of January, 2010, you will find to be January 25th, not January 18th as stated in the article.

24 January in 2005, 23 January in 2006, 22 January in 2007, 21 January in 2008, 19 January in 2009, 25 January in 2010 (the 18 January didn't fall on the Monday of the last full week of January - you will find that was 25 January), 24 January in 2011, 23 January in 2012, 21 January in 2013, 20 January in 2014

Could the confusion year mentioned in the article of 2011, be possibly a typing mistake or error by the writer?

There should be no confusion at all.

Butdavid (talk) 08:22, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 09:51, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Renaming/Notability
I don't think labelling this article as a date is helpful, and is contributing to the perceived lack of notability. This is simply an ad campaign, not notable enough to be any observed date. If we replace "date" from the title with "ad campaign", I think it would end confusion about the notability. In addition, this shouldn't be a date as there is no exact or calculable date associated with the campaign. Willtheoct (talk) 17:48, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Original origin
This article (as well as every other source I could find) basically credits Cliff Arnall as coining the term and creating the concept in 2005... but I found this comic from 1947 that mentions it being Blue Monday, and it's not something made up for the story, the character is mentioning it as a particularly bad day, dropping the name like that, apparently assuming it's common knowledge for the reader. In that case it apparently was Monday 13th, so maybe it's a completely different superstition, but it's the same term at least.--Kombatgod (talk) 23:50, 20 February 2021 (UTC)


 * The Oxford English Dictionary gives the following definition and quotations for "Blue Monday":
 * Originally in German contexts. A Monday during which people choose not to work, esp. for a celebration, or because they have indulged excessively over the course of the weekend. Now chiefly historical.
 * N[ew] E[nglish] D[ictionary] (1887) posits a sense ‘the Monday before Lent’, but this is apparently not supported by evidence, although it does exist in German.
 * 1790  J. Dornford tr. J. S. Pütter Hist. Devel. German Empire II. 130   "Some few articles have been regulated by particular decrees of the Empire; such as..the abolishment of Blue Monday [Ger. des blauen Montags] in 1771."
 * 1790  J. Dornford in tr. J. S. Pütter Hist. Devel. German Empire II. vii. ix. 131 (note)    "Blue Monday was now established; and the abuse prevailed to such a degree, that the day was soon distinguished by debaucheries of every kind."
 * 1840  Evening Transcript (Boston) 2 Mar. 2/2   "This was blue Monday in the House... The House exhibited a ‘beggarly account of empty’ seats."
 * 1844  W. Howitt tr. P. D. Holthaus Wanderings Journeyman Tailor ix. 109   "I did not omit on Sundays, and sometimes too on blue Mondays, to go about and observe the life and manners of this great city [sc. Constantinople]."
 * 1885  Harper's Mag. May 873/1   "The workman getting sober after his usual ‘blue Monday’."
 * 1932  in R. B. Hersey Workers' Emotions in Shop & Home vi. 97   "No Blue Monday for me today. I got my work all up now and I can keep even unless something unusual happens."
 * 2003  S. E. Hirsch After Strike ii. 59   "Blue Monday—a day spent nursing a hangover from Sunday or extending its alcoholic spree—was a custom for many."
 * So the term has clearly been around for many years, with, as far as I can see, two fairly distinct meanings: (a) a celebratory day off work/public holiday (the original German meaning: the OED gives more detail on this, going back to 1550 and earlier; and in fact, I see there's a German wiki article, Blauer Montag, which in turn links to an English article, Saint Monday); and (b) a day when not much gets done because of suffering a hangover (a bit like the "morning after the night before"). The 1885 quote above seems to reflect a transition between the two: the Monday was a day for celebration, but it's left the workman hung over (presumably on the Tuesday). The 1932 quote doesn't mention hangovers, but does imply that Blue Monday is typically a day when nothing much gets done, so maybe that's now shifting into a sense of a depressing and unfulfilled day (something along the lines of a "Monday morning feeling"), which seems to be how it's used in your 1947 comic.
 * The Cliff Arnall sense is slightly different again, in that the term's been tied to a specific day in January and given a (supposedly) scientific basis. This article is about the Arnall concept, and I don't think we want to wander off into too much peripheral detail; but we could perhaps make clear that he borrowed an existing term. GrindtXX (talk) 19:45, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
 * @GrindtXX in German there is also the expression "Montags-Auto" ("monday-car", can be applied also used for other industrially produced items) if a car is faulty and gets broken more than average. the idea behind is that on Monday the workers who built the car were not so careful and thus the car has a lower quality. this saying is around at least since my chilhood in the 80s (sorry, I only have this personal evidence). Also, there is the song "Blue Monday" by New Order. 46.82.84.231 (talk) 06:55, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

This is racism
In the United States the third Monday of January is Martin Luther King Day. Stating that this is the most depressing day of the day is racism, even if it is presented as a commercial stunt. Wikipedia should not tolerate racism, by ignoring it. Afil (talk) 22:53, 17 January 2022 (UTC)


 * Yeah, it's almost as offensive as the cultural imperialism of the assumption that just because a particular custom is observed in one country, everyone else in the world should defer to it.
 * That said, the lede paragraph of the article used to end with the sentence: "By coincidence, the date in the United States almost always coincides with the celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a federal holiday, and so the concept of Blue Monday is not widely known there." It was deleted by an IP in this edit of January 2021 as unsourced. The first part of the sentence, the date of Martin Luther King Day, is self-evident, and doesn't need a source. If anyone can come up with a source explicitly saying that the concept of Blue Monday is not widely known in the US, the sentence could be reinserted. GrindtXX (talk) 13:23, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Date
The french article about blue monday says the dates are always between the 15th and 21st of january. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Monday_(jour) I don't know if this information should be added to this article tho. Vincent-vst🚀 (talk) 14:21, 16 January 2023 (UTC)