The Stories Behind the Songs – Part Two

It’s snowing!!!! Not those big, fat, fluffy flakes where one can almost cover your face. But it’s snowing…. Sigh. The grey, dull days of January with just a mere hint that the sun actually exists…..which begs the question, why doesn’t Bell Canada hold their “Let’s Talk” campaign on Blue Monday? That makes infinitely more sense than say, Robbie Burns Day. Why in heaven’s name would you pick the 25th of January for mental health awareness??? According to a number of sources, the term “Blue Monday” was coined by holiday company Sky Travel in a 2005 press release. Cliff Arnall, at the time a tutor at Cardiff University, had come up with a light-hearted formula to determine the most depressing day of the year which commonly falls on the third Monday in January. It’s now a worldwide phenomena. Everyone has jumped on the bandwagon and the term is used repeatedly by companies and organizations (there’s even a BlueMonday.org) and stories in all sorts of media abound. Newspapers recommend taking the day off, there are various sites that will calculate, on a yearly basis, which Monday is going to be “blue” so you can prepare…..the power of suggestion. Although the entire idea is considered pseudoscience by the scientific community, Blue Monday is not going away anytime soon. Did you know mosquitoes are attracted to the colour blue twice as much as any other colour?