Quite a struggle to find a cure for the January blues

Country Living with Francis Farragher

There’s a certain grim reality about the first Monday of the New Year when we all realise that that the days of ‘flattening’ boxes of Quality Street and quite frenziedly lowering pints of ale have come to an end. One of the most lonesome sights of the Christmas was that of a bunch of darkening bananas . . . untouched, ignored and completely out-manoeuvred by the chocolate alliance.

Quite a number of my friends and colleagues have even pushed the boat out a bit further by boasting of having all the Christmas decorations and paraphernalia taken down and boxed away for another year by last Sunday night. A reminder to them that Christmas didn’t actually come to an end until the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6, fell on completely deaf ears.

The Epiphany is actually one of the big Christian feast days of the Christmas, celebrating the occasion of the visit of the Three Wise Men to visit the baby Jesus, the first manifestation of God in human format. In many country homes the night preceding the 6th, was always one for the 12 candles, each one given a family name, with the burning-out of each little wick a sign of the end of life . . . in hindsight all a bit quite morbid.

Where the candle burnt into the timber and left not a trace of grease behind, this was an indication that this individual lived a long life but didn’t leave a cent after him (nursing home costs etc.). If a candle blew out pretty prematurely, leaving a stump of wax behind, this signified a youngish death with quite a serious fortune left behind for distribution among the relatives.

Anyway with many houses having trees, lighting and decorations all removed by Sunday night last, the Epiphany feast on the twelfth day of Christmas and the 12 candles tradition don’t seem to carry as much weight as they did back the years.

We’re all facing rather dire warnings that the third Monday in January (the 18th this year) will be our most miserable day of the year, when we all realise that we’re stony broke after the excesses of Christmas while the days are still dark and the weather is invariable murky.

Some UK academic, with nothing better to do, devised a mathematical formula of sorts to empirically prove that the Blue Monday, ‘awful day syndrome’ did actually exist using seven variables to explain to us why we feel so much under the cosh by the turn of mid-January.

Factors thrown into this quasi-mathematical stew included the weather, debt levels, the arrival of the next pay cheque, the passing of time since the ‘high’ of Christmas, guilt about not having put corrective measures in place, low motivational levels and the realisation that desperate measures need to be put in place to stop the rot.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.