Time to embrace Blue Monday: Why science tells us miserable weather makes us happier
When Matt Gaw made the decision to walk, run and swim in the rain, it had a life-changing positive effect and with good reason - his brain and blood were being transformed
Welcome to Blue Monday. The most depressing day of the year, or so the theory goes. January is already dog-eared and dull. We’re feeling skint and chances are the energy for resolutions to get fit, stop drinking or do whatever it is that we think will transform our lives has already waned. Then there is the weather, the final part of this unholy trinity. It is the time of year when it is probably cold and, more often than not, raining.
Of course, most of us now know the whole concept of Blue Monday as some carefully calculated day of existential dread is nonsense. It is the result of not much more than pseudo-science: a formula generated at the behest of a travel company who (surprise, surprise) used the phrase in a press release to promote their winter getaways. From then on, Blue Monday became a marketing tool; a way for companies to sell us the idea we are miserable in the hope we buy ourselves happiness.
The trouble with marketing tricks is that the ones that stick around do so because there is a truth at their core. January is the dreariest of months and, at this point of the year, many of us are so light-starved we’re dreaming of blue skies. Just look at our relationship with the weather, or more specifically, the rain.
Outside of darkness and the night, it is hard to think of another natural experience that is so closely tied to human emotion. As a writer and an English teacher, I often find myself using the rain to judge tone and mood in literature and language.
“OK class, it is raining, what does that suggest? What does the author want us to feel? The skies weep, raindrops slide down windows like tears or hit us ‘like a punishment of steel rods’.”
In cultures where the climate is dry and the landscape barren, rain is seen as a gift − a joyful source of life. Here, unless you are a gardener going through a particularly dry spell, rain is so plentiful that it has become an annoyance; a metaphor and simile for misery. It dampens our day and dulls our mood. A soaking is dour and sombre. It is the pantomime villain that speaks with a sibilant lisp. It is the rain on our parade; the vinegary p*** on our chips.
Yet, what if we are getting rain wrong? What if it is the most miserable weather that is capable of making us feel better? It seems to me that Blue Monday is annoying not only because of its commercial intent but because it exposes our strained relationship with rain.
It was in 2022, during a summer that caused the heat to ratchet to record-breaking, spit-sizzling heights, that I started to dream of feeling rain on my skin. For the next 12 months, I resolved to remember this feeling and not just brave “inclement” weather but to actively seek it out and try and enjoy it. I wanted to explore and understand where weather comes from, how it transforms light and mood, how it shapes landscapes, language and, well… us.
That year of walking, running and swimming in rain – whether it was a heatwave-breaking storm, a spring shower, or a day of drizzle – has shown me that contrary to our cultural tropes there is little sadness in the rain. In fact, it feels like the opposite. There’s a lightness, a joy in experiencing something utterly fundamental.
One of the things I found I loved most about rain was how present it made me feel. During a journey to Seathwaite in Cumbria, one of the wettest inhabited spots in the UK, I watched the rain move across the fells towards me in great undulating sheets, flashing light and dark like the flank of a mackerel. And then I wasn’t looking at the rain anymore – I was feeling it. The rain touches every part of us, makes an unthinking map, highlighting the space that we are taking up. Each drop forces you into some corporeal cogito and say, I am here, I am exactly here at this exact time.
The positive, mood-boosting feelings I had that day and many days since are also backed up by real science.
At school, we are taught how when air cools, water vapour condenses into water droplets before eventually falling to the ground as rain. But when the clouds do burst, there is actually something other than water in the air: negative ions. These tasteless, odourless molecules, formed when air molecules are broken apart by moving water, are charged with electricity and are most abundant around rivers, waterfalls, beaches and breaking waves. They are there, too, when it rains.
Negative ions, which are breathed in and transferred to blood and brain, have been linked with biochemical changes that impact positively on mental health. A 2013 review of scientific literature published between 1957 and 2012 found that negative ions could even have a significant impact on people with depression. In short, while we might look out of the window and associate wet weather with gloom and noir and misery, being out in the rain could potentially boost our mood.
In 2018, Cliff Arnall, the psychologist whose work inspired Blue Monday told this newspaper it was “never his intention” to make the day sound negative, but rather to encourage people "to make those big decisions for the year ahead."
Thankfully, making the most of this life, whether it is in January or December or any month in between, need not involve spending thousands on holidays, gadgets or fads.
Just step outside, let the rain pierce your skin like splinters, let the wind circle and rush into your ears until you hear the blown tide of your own blood. Dress for it. Don’t dress for it. Close your eyes to it, open your lips and arms to it. Throw open the doors, windows and soul to the sublime wildness of weather and let it work its magic.
Matt Gaw is the author of In All Weathers: A Journey Through Rain, Fog, Wind, Ice and Everything In Between (Elliott & Thompson, £10.99), out now in paperback
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