January can feel exhausting. With the magic of Christmas and New Year fading fast, returning to routine brings with it an undeniable emotional slump. But is it really the saddest month?
The idea of “Blue Monday” caught on in 2005, when British psychologist Cliff Arnall announced that he had identified the saddest day of the year using a mathematical formula that factored in climate, post-holiday debt, and dwindling motivation in keeping up with New Year’s resolutions.
The scientific community quickly (and correctly) dismissed the idea as psuedoscience – far from a psychological finding, Arnall’s formula was revealed to be a marketing ploy designed for a travel agency. The agency’s proposed cure for the winter blues was, naturally, to purchase a holiday.
You can’t schedule sadness
The term Blue Monday continues to appear each January in the media and in ad campaigns, despite a total lack of evidence that one specific day on the calendar is linked to an overall peak in unhappiness.
Sadness is a complex human response, not a programmed event. While winter weather can certainly affect your mood, there are commercial interests surrounding the concept of sadness, which seek to influence behaviour by encouraging people to consume objects or experiences.
Indeed, some brands have made sadness into a profitable resource, presenting products or experiences as solutions to the same unhappiness they perpetuate. They use the idea of the “saddest day of the year” to influence consumption patterns, leveraging the “misery is not miserly” effect which links low emotional states to increased spending.
This kind of marketing can also influence the emotional dynamics of many households. It creates expectations that are difficult to fulfil, encourages materialism, and creates tensions between adults and children. This all feeds into broader feelings of unhappiness.
But there is further risk when these messages reach children directly. When young people are told that “negative” emotions can be combatted through shopping or digital, artificial distractions, it weakens their ability to recognise, understand and manage what they feel. This makes it vital that we factor media discourse into children’s emotional education.
Sadness and the developing mind
Far from an obstacle to be overcome, sadness plays a fundamental role in children’s development. At a very early age, they learn that expressing sadness can gain them the support of parents and carers, and that in most cases, it is much more effective than other emotions in getting attention and solace.
Furthermore, sadness helps to readjust goals after a failure, allowing children to modify their approaches and expectations in the face of adverse situations. It also drives introspection processes that allow children to reflect on what they feel, their values, and how they relate to others. Experiencing sadness therefore contributes to moral growth.
Emotions linked to loss, disappointment and injustice help children to build their sense of right and wrong, develop sensitivity to the suffering of others, and strengthen their empathy. In fact, recent studies have found that experiencing sadness is linked to an increased ability to put oneself in another’s shoes.
Adult responses to sadness
The way adults respond to sadness has a decisive impact on how children learn to manage it. A warm, sensitive and caring family environment benefits emotional development, while tense, cold and critical interactions hinder it. Family dynamics – the emotional models that determine the quality of conversations and availability of support – are what shape the way a child interprets and expresses sadness.
School and social environments are also key. Children who feel supported not only experience sadness less intensely, but also develop greater confidence to cope with it.
Guiding children in recognising and managing sadness is a way to help them develop resilience. When they learn strategies for coping with difficult emotions — talking, asking for help, putting their feelings into words, identifying what they need — they acquire internal resources that enable them to face future challenges. This resilience translates into stronger self-esteem and a more realistic and confident perception of their own abilities.
Cultural values and beliefs also play a part in determining which expressions of sadness are accepted, considered appropriate, or suppressed. This means the expression and regulation of sadness vary significantly between cultural and social environments. Understanding these differences allows us to better support children’s emotional processes, and avoid misinterpreting their behaviour.
When faced with commercial messages like those surrounding Blue Monday, adults must recognise that this emotion is a natural part of growing up – not just one day of the year – and offer children spaces where they can feel heard, supported and understood.
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This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
