Spread your arms wide and embrace the January blues

This time of year gets a bad rap, all in aid of selling sadness. But with a fresh start and the promise of 2025 opening up, writes Olivia Petter, it might just be the best month of all

- Olivia Petter

January is often called "the cruellest month". In the past 24 hours alone, I'll bet you've heard someone say that at least twice. Because the day I'm writing this is Blue Monday, the most depressing day of the year according to, well, anyone who works in marketing. Yes, that really is all Blue Monday is: a branding opportunity first coined by a psychologist in 2005 as a way of selling holidays.

By now, this is well known. And yet, every year, our social media feeds, TV ad breaks, and billboards become awash with references to why today is so desperately dismal – and what we can spend our money on to pick ourselves up.

It’s a noxious narrative that has spilt into all of January, characterising it as the worst month of the year. Everyone, we’re led to believe, is broke, sad, grumpy, and just generally rather unhappy with themselves. All this despite the fact that nobody ever even called January “the cruellest month”. The phrase is a misnomer referring to the first line of TS Eliot’s “The Waste Land”, in which said month is not January at all. It’s April.

But back to January, which I think has been wrongly maligned for far too long. Because I’d argue there’s nothing miserable about this time of year at all (aside from the weather, obviously, but that's somewhat out of our control). In fact, it’s often when I feel the happiest and most optimistic about my life, my mindset, and the year ahead.

I’m not going to regale you with some woo-woo nonsense in a bid to sell you something, I promise – there’s enough of that lurking around as an equally capitalistic riposte to Blue Monday. I will, however, make a case for this being the best month of the year. Bear with me.