The Saddest Day of The Year?

If you are to believe the news readers on MSNBC.com today, January 23rd is the saddest day of the year.

In sharing this tongue and cheek story, the MSNBC readers quote a British Psychologist Cliff Arnall who has created a formula to predict the year's saddest day.

Found the formula in the news.telegraph that is also giving Arnall lots of coverage today.

"An expert in winter disorders first identified January as the most stressful month. Now Cliff Arnall, a health psychologist at Cardiff University, has devised a formula to work out the worst day of the year and has come up with Jan 23 for 2006.

His calculation is based on the poorest weather, debts owed for seasonal spending, the time since Christmas, the period of time before you abandon New Year's resolutions, the dates when motivation levels seems to be at their lowest and the timing for the need for action to escape the blues."

Thanks to a British Blogger, Simon Jeffery, who is no fan of Cliff Arnall or the media's habit of quoting him at will,  it turns out that the good Cliff Arnall is less concerned with the mental health of Brits than he is with the health of his client's bottom line.

"Others went for the less rigorous approach of pointing out that his discovery of the most depressing day (the only answer for which, Dr Arnall said, was to book a holiday) was commissioned by the satellite channel Sky Travel."

The "others" Jeffery links to is MOHO.org--a website promoting four resorts in the Virgin Islands. In their newsletter they shared this...

"The formula was devised to help a travel company "analyze when people book holidays and holiday trends," said a London-based PR agency. "People feel bleak when they have nothing planned, but once they book a holiday they have a goal, they work toward having time off and a relaxing period," When you imagine yourself on the beach it makes you feel positive. You will save money, go to the gym and come back to the optimism you had at the end of 2004."

So Kudos to the PR agency who came up with the idea -- it worked. You got lots of media placement and that's your job. You did it well.

SHAME. SHAME. SHAME on mainstream media who

(a) didn't take the time to research Arnall's credentials
(b) didn't disclose that the formula was created not as an academic exercise but as a corporate exercise.

Kudos to the bloggers -- who got it right.

Oh, and as far as January 23rd goes. To me it's one of the happiest days of the year. It's my son Noah's 22nd Birthday.

Happy Birthday!