TODAY is officially the gloomiest day of the year – known as 'blue Monday', according to a mathematical formula, and rain and falling temperatures from Cantabria to the Balearic Islands forecast by the weathermen are not likely to help matters.
But Spanish psychologists have plenty of positive words for those who are feeling down.
The formula was devised by Cliff Arnall of Cardiff University (Wales, UK) and, although he says it is not scientific, experts across the northern hemisphere believe there could be something in it.
Cold weather, getting dark early, struggling with debts or a battered bank account from the aftermath of the Christmas period – coupled with January being a five-week month, meaning longer until payday – the anti-climax of the end of the festive season and, for many, now only a week back into work after it is all over, plus the seemingly-endless wait until the spring and summer, general lack of get up and go, the grim realisation that New Year's resolutions of drinking less, eating more healthily, stopping smoking and exercising more have all been broken, the extra weight gain from the long Christmas feast, and a dash of SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder, or 'winter depression') all conspire to make the third Monday in January a miserable time for everyone north of the Equator, Arnall says.
His formula uses 'W' to denote the weather, 'd' to denote debt left behind by Christmas and 'D' for income or money in the bank, 'T' for time since Christmas, 'q' (shown here as º) for 'time since failing New Year's resolutions', 'M' for motivational levels, and Nª for low motivational levels.
Multiplying the weather and money in the bank minus debt by time since Christmas and squared by how long it has been since New Year's resolutions were given up upon, and dividing this by motivation multiplied by lack of motivation, the result, somehow, comes to the third Monday in January.
The formula looks like this:
[W = (D-d)] x Tº
M x Nª
But all is not completely lost: for expats in Spain, it still stays lighter for longer than in the UK, with night not falling until around 18.00 as opposed to about 15.30 in Britain; January is already halfway over, so payday is now nearer than it was at the start of the New Year; and many parts of Spain are in the thick of celebrating San Antón.
The patron saint of animals, San Antón covers several weekends and includes Mediaeval markets, public dinners, the famous 'blessing of the animals' service when pet-owners bring their fluffy friends to church – always entertaining to watch, for those who dare not take their four-legged flatmates along – and is a great way to break up the bluest month of the year.
As houses in Spain – except in the north, where it is more common and they are well-prepared for it – are not designed to guard against the cold, going back to work after Christmas is actually a luxury, since offices, shops, bars and other indoor employment premises are likely to be much warmer than staff's own homes.
And if you do not own the business, it also means you save on heating costs by being in the office for a third of each day.
For those who celebrated Christmas Spanish-style, this means presents both on Christmas Eve and on Three Kings, the evening of January 5 or the morning of January 6 – therefore, it is hard to be gloomy when you think of all the fabulous gifts you did not have three weeks earlier, and remember how their givers thought of you personally and cared about you enough to buy them for you.
This is the line Spanish health and sports psychologist Patricia Ramírez Loeffler takes – focusing on the plus points and the longer-term future rather than the cold, dark and debt immediately ahead.
"If you're going back to work after Christmas, it means you're lucky because you have a job. If you have credit cards to pay, it means you have an income sufficient enough to have been granted a card in the first place,” she recalls.
“Returning to work means meeting your colleagues again and sharing tales about what you did over the holidays.”
It also means the inevitable festive stress is over, meaning you can relax; and the Christmas food is now all eaten up or past its sell-by date, so by returning to your normal diet, the holiday weight-gain will reverse.
