Sixty-Two Million Pages of Horse Pucky

Everyone and his uncle now seems to be advising us on how we can banish the dreaded 'January Blues'.

Yes, Henry has contracted a couple of interesting infections and battle scars after fighting a colony of rabid badgers intent on eating our chickens, but I would hardly say January has been 'blue'.

A quick googly search reveals 62,000,000 mentions of 'january blues' (damn Google, decapitalising everything I type), and three pages into the aforesaid multiple millions of search results I became more than a little bored of reading the phrase 'beat the January Blues'. 

The syndrome has even been renamed, by Professor Cary Cooper from the University of Lancaster, as 'acute post-bank holiday depression syndrome'.

No relation

Dr Cliff Arnall of Cardiff University suggests that Monday 22nd January is 'the worst day of the year'.  Then I looked at the calendar and decided he was crazy.  There isn't a Monday 22nd January this year.  It was the 21st.  So, I skipped the Net Doctor website – it was clearly silly – and pressed on doughtily through the interwoods in a bold attempt to ascertain what January Blues actually are.

Family seems to depress people, especially over the festive season, not to mention that one has to buy one’s wretched family members the new hot phone as Christmas presents.  Drinking too much to get over the cost of the new hot phone doesn't help, and the damned family is making your alcohol consumption even worse.  All this alcohol is leading to disrupted sleep, and the noise your blasted family makes may well lead to no sleep at all.  And after all this, your family staying over the festive season has made your household bills go up, up, up vertiginously, rather in the style of daddy’s old Bofors 20mm anti-aircraft gun.

So, in January, instead of being relieved that it's finally all over, you're left with alcohol dependence, unpayably vast bills, deafening quiet after all the noise, and one or two more stone around the hips; while all you got in return was a pair of socks with Rudolph the Red-Nosed Bloody Quarry Species on them.  Which you can't even wear outwith the month of December.  How useless!  How depressing!

To top it all off, you've decided on a few New Year's Resolutions, you silly sod.  Given up smoking, have you?  Gone on a diet, have you?  Decided to get a more exciting job, eh?  Damn well taken out a gym membership, have you?  Not to mention, it's back to work for you now, Sonny Jim.  (Unless of course you went and caught the Norovirus, in which case, you may amend that last one to ‘Well, then it's off to the hospital for you, Sonny Jim.’)

It's all cute and cuddly, until someone throws up a lung.

So.  Now I've read all the ways to 'beat' the January Blues – move more, make a friend, try something new – etc, etc.  But what the more intelligent bear might wish to know is, how do you avoid the damned January Blues in the first place?

Well, let me tell you.

1.    Do it like Uncle Bulldog.  Be insanely rich.  The presents won't mean anything to you, mostly because you won't even buy any.  Throw the largest, most raucous and indulgent Christmas party, resulting in your one increased festive bill, and then be miserly the rest of the year.  Everyone will remember the party, but not the fact that all they got was a Christmas cracker toy.  Well, you don't stay rich if you're always buying people things, do you?

2.     Do it like Uncle Whippet.  Don't stop celebrating.  Why only be festive and giving around Christmas?  Be like dear old Uncle Whippy and just keep celebrating all the year long.

And he always seems so cheerful

 3.    Don't Buy Any Presents.  For those who are not insanely rich and/or my uncle: don't buy anything at first, and definitely not until you see what you've been given.  If you do receive something, you're likely then to be in time for the January sales.  If you don't receive any, then don't buy any.  If they're going to be a cheapskate (or 'chesapeake' as our American cousins insist on spelling it), then they can't expect you to ‘fork out’, can they?  If they do complain, use a hockey stick to the shin; then they'll have something proper to complain about.

4.     Become a Puritan.  They don't do Christmas, alcohol, or anything fun.  It'll certainly save on New Year's Resolutions, too, as you'll have nothing to give up.  This one is for those who can't practically commit even to no. 3.

We spit in the face of 'fun'

 5.  Hibernate.  Splendid idea!  This way, you get the depression metabolically, rather than mentally.  You'll save on the heating and food bills too.  It's a season of heterothermy, with low body temperature, slow breathing and heart rate, and a low metabolic rate.  You can stuff your face all autumn and burn it off by sleeping all winter.  Just hang up a 'Do Not Disturb' sign on the bedroom door and you won't even have to see your family or buy them any presents.  They'll understand.  You don't do Christmas, you do hibernation.  This approach can readily be combined with no. 6, 'Live in a Cave'.

6.     Live in a Cave.  Well, why not?  Get the Council to wire in some electricity and running water, and you're laughing.  You may wish to insert some sort of fence around the cave mouth to protect against sociable hermits and nosy neighbours.

They're not as rustic as they used to be

There you go.  If you're not such a clotpole in the lead-up to Christmas, then you can avoid the 'January Blues' entirely.

And which do Henry and I subscribe to?  Why, we're the ones at Uncle Bulldog's Christmas party, of course.  We're so hungover for the rest of winter that we completely forget about everyone else.

Nothing to it.