Blue Monday

The sky is grey, it's windy but there's no rain. People waiting at the bus stops are shivering from cold, rubbing their hands. The days are too short and the spring is still too far away. You start to comprehend that you haven't yet started your New Year's resolutions and that probably you'll never succeed with them. You lack of money because the Christmas period wasn't so long ago and you had to buy gifts. And because the Christmas break is over you have to go back to work and there is no near holiday in sight. In addition, the students must cope with approaching winter semester exams.

Doctor Cliff Arnall claims it's normal if you feel overwhelmed in the mid-January, there are many factors leading you to this depressive state. Using his observations, the psychologist came with a conception of Blue Monday, the gloomiest day of the year, which occurs (from 2011) always on the third Monday of the year. The term was born in 2004, and the first Blue Monday was "celebrated" on 24 January 2005.

A mathematical formula which helped Arnall to calculate the date on which falls the Blue Monday.
(source)

Many would say that Arnall is doing a sort of pseudoscience with his calculations, but I have to admit that for real there's something unsettling in this period of the year. Hope you will not fall into this mid-January spleen.

Happy Blue Monday everyone!

PS. Arnall also calculated the date of the happiest day in the year which falls in the mid-June.

Saint Sylvester

Hello, it's been a long time since I posted on this blog. Today I'd like to tell you something about Saint Sylvester's Day since in my country we do not celebrate "New Year's Eve" but "Sylvester". Sylvester I was a pope who lived in the 4th century and died on 31 December 335. By a slight chance you may already have heard of him as he was mentioned in the "Donatio Constantini", a forged document from the 8th century which was crucial in a great medieval dispute between pope and emperor. So the Pope died on today's New Year's Eve and shortly after the Church started to commemorate him every 31 December. But why do we celebrate his death day with huge parties? The legend has it that Sybille, an ancient Greek diviner predicted that in the year 1000 an enormous dragon imprisoned by the Pope Sylvester I in the caves of Latran will be freed and it'll be the end of the world. People believed that Sylvester II, a current pope, will be a one who will free the beast. So when the clock struck midnight and the dragon didn't show up, inhabitants of Rome entered in an ecstatic state and started to jubilate. This night, the Pope gave his first apostolic blessing "Urbi et Orbi" ("to the City [of Rome] and to the World").

Saint Sylvester And The Dragon, Agnolo Gaddi (14th century)