On Monday, 12 January, the liturgical Christmas season gives way to Ordinary Time, and with this, though there are some diehards who will keep their crib up for another few weeks, Christmas is for most of us well and truly over. The brief interlude of magic, the crib, carols, decorations, and celebrations, gives way to the prosaic, the banal, and frankly the boring period of Ordinary Time. Now it is, as they say in an Ulster expression I love, “back to porridge”.
And in the Northern Hemisphere, at least, there could be nothing less magical than the month of January. Research, perhaps of a slightly tongue in cheek nature, released in 2005, even concluded that the combination of bad weather, debt, failed resolutions, and post Christmas fatigue all combine to make the third Monday of January the most depressing day of the entire year, “Blue Monday”. While the research behind Blue Monday was promoted by the UK tour agency Sky Travel to encourage people to book holidays as an antidote to January gloom, there is nonetheless, many feel, something to it. How could one not feel a little blue about dark winter mornings, alarm clocks, rushed breakfasts, cold wet weather, traffic, and the works?
