Cheer Up: Science Says Yesterday Was Most Depressing Day Of The Year

The five best weeks of the year occur between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve. This is a time when families and friends get together to sing songs, get drunk, give and receive presents, and stuff their mouths full of gluttonous mounds of turkey and pie. However, after New Year’s Day there’s … well, what, exactly? The next major “fun” holiday is Valentine’s Day, and even those who have significant others aren’t always up for celebrating that.

Anyway, this is a longwinded way of saying that January is a terrible, terrible month––and now we have scientific proof of that. According to British researchers, January 6 is the most depressing day of the year. Although the results came from studying "millions of tweets," that sounds like a good approximation. January 6 is usually when you start to realize all the holiday cheer you were filled with last month has now frozen over, and your heart has become a shell of its former Christmas self.

But, there is a reason to celebrate: Today is January 7, which means the most depressing day of the year is now over! Then again, you probably don’t care, because you’re likely freezing your butt off. In the last two days, we hit record low temperatures across the country. In fact, Chicago is just barely registering above zero degrees right now, which is low enough to freeze a bottle of water instantly:

But it’s not all bad news. You now have a little over six months until June 21, which is allegedly the happiest day of the year––unless we end up hitting record high, desert-like temperatures when June comes around.