Don’t let the bluest of Mondays get you down

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/01/2018 (3132 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Grab a large box of tissues and prepare to wallow in misery, kids, because today is officially the most depressing day of the year.

That’s because today, Jan. 15, for the 12th consecutive year, the world is celebrating Blue Monday — the day on which all the bad things in life converge into a single pulsating blob of post-holiday despair.

Is that cool, or what?

OK, you don’t have to answer that question. What you need to know is that Blue Monday was discovered by a team of crackerjack scientists who were planning to do an important experiment on this day, but ended up feeling so blue they decided to stay in bed, eat Häagen-Dazs directly from the container and listen to weepy Adele songs on a continual loop.

I am, of course, kidding. According to online reports, the concept of Blue Monday was created by (brace yourselves for a surprise) a British holiday company that no doubt wanted to promote January getaways.

They even came up with a pseudoscientific mathematical formula comprised of apparently random numbers, letters, symbols and punctuation marks to help calculate the date on which everyone is expected to weep uncontrollably or just stare out the window with a moony expression on their face.

This equation takes into account scientific factors, such as your battered bank account, your bulging belly and the fact you have had to return to a soul-destroying job in the middle of a bone-chilling cold snap, only to discover that you are in last place in your office hockey pool.

Blue Monday is generally calculated as falling on the third Monday of January, but it tends to move around during the month, and this year — as you may recall from the beginning of this column — today is officially the most depressing day on the calendar.

Despite the fact that it is a complete crock, Blue Monday has carved out a special place in popular culture, because who doesn’t enjoy a day devoted to feeling miserable?

Well, I for one am not going to sit here idly and wallow in a free-floating depression simply because some public relations firm thinks it’s a good way to get us to fork out cash for trips to the Canary Islands.

Today, in a sincere and humanitarian effort to write enough words to qualify as a column and continue receiving a paycheque, I am going to offer up several important reasons why you, the misty-eyed reader, should find unfettered joy on Jan. 15.

For starters, you should know there are a lot of things to celebrate today other than getting deeply depressed.

Along with Blue Monday, today also happens to be (drum roll, please) National Hat Day, which, according to HolidayInsights.com, is “set aside to wear and enjoy a hat of your choice and style.

Isn’t it great that hats come in all shapes, sizes, colours and styles? There’s one to fit every size head and personality.”

Yes, National Hat Day! Who knew? Just think how happy you will be when, before walking out into weather that is literally colder than Mars to discover that your car is frozen into a solid block of ice, you slip on your favorite Winnipeg Jets tuque.

In Manitoba, of course, we don’t think of them of as tuques, do we? No, technically speaking, they’re block heaters.

As if a day to honour all things hat wasn’t enough, today also happens to be — and you are going to want to wake up the kids and alert the neighbours before reading this next bit — National Strawberry Ice Cream Day.

For the record, this is not to be confused with National Ice Cream Day, which is celebrated on July 1. So, fill a bowl with your favorite icy treat, head out into the minus 50 wind chill and experience complete happiness. At least your face will be sporting a smile when they find your frozen body next spring.

So, we can already see that Blue Monday is not quite as blue as we thought it was going to be at the beginning of today’s column. What you need to know, historically speaking, is that more awesome things have happened on this day than you can shake a cellphone at.

For example, this is the day back in 1541 that the French king gave Jean-François Roberval a commission to settle the province of New France, namely Canada, which is nice. It is also the day in 1892 that Canadian James Naismith published the rules of basketball, which led to the NBA, which is also nice.

Today is also that day that, back in 1889, the Coca-Cola Company was incorporated in Atlanta, which led to things (we can’t be more specific) going better with Coke.

Out of a sense of journalistic fairness, we should point out that some horrible things have happened on this date, too. We are thinking here about the Great Molasses Flood of 1919, which you will think we are making up, but which is an actual historical event.

The Great Molasses Flood occurred in a north end neighbourhood of Boston, Mass., when a mammoth molasses storage tank at the Purity Distilling Company burst, sending a tidal wave of 2.3 million gallons of molasses racing through the streets at a speed of 56 km/h, killing a reported 21 people and injuring 150.

But we don’t have time to think about molasses right now, because we need to think about bacon. It seems a survey of 2,000 adults in the U.K., commissioned by Holiday Inn Express, found the perfect bacon sandwich consists of the following elements: bacon; untoasted, buttered white bread and a thick layer of ketchup.

The best news is that, to help people in London cope with Blue Monday, Holiday Inn Express in the U.K. plans to hand out free bacon sandwiches today.

I can think of no better way to beat the blues than with free bacon. But if anyone squirts (bad word) ketchup on mine, I will kill them. Ha, ha, ha. OK, I’m not kidding.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca