Yesterday was Blue Monday, officially the most depressing day of the year, according to an idea that has long been debunked by everyone, including its creator – but somehow still strikes a chord. When you’re still paying the price for Christmas excess, indebted, hungover, sickened by the very things that previously were your joy (pigs in blankets), the last thing you want is the fresh humiliation of new year resolutions already failed. If it’s any consolation, just because it was bang in the middle of the month doesn’t mean yesterday was the day to admit defeat. Realistically, whatever it was you were trying to change, you’d probably screwed it up by last Friday. Nigella Lawson tried to leaven the mood on X (Twitter) with a recipe for “sunshine hummus”. She’s a mystery, that woman, and just adding “a mystery” to the list of her beguiling qualities did actually cheer me up, even if the hummus didn’t, because hummus cannot.

Last Monday, meanwhile, was apparently “divorce day”: the first working Monday of the year, which is said to bring the highest volume of inquiries to family lawyers. People always attribute this to the stress of Christmas, which isn’t it at all; rather, anyone with any sense puts it off until after Christmas, so it’s really just a backlog. But whether I’m right or not (I am), both of these events are as regular and seasonal as Christmas itself, as predictable and immovable as Halloween. The drop in temperature, meanwhile, the skies promising snow (sorry, “travel chaos”) too late for any of the attendant reindeer-based romance, is less reliable, but still not what you’d call a black swan event.

We’re normally pretty good at anticipating things that happen every year; we have no problem with Christmas itself, for instance, and prepare for it for weeks in advance, individually and socially. Even Easter, which moves, rarely creeps up on us. Bonfire Night doesn’t even have that much emotional baggage, and we still pelt each other with advice – how to comfort your dog, how to make s’mores, how to deal with minor burns – for a couple of weeks in advance. But January arrives with its big despair events, and the best we can come up with is “smile at strangers” and “keep a gratitude journal”.

Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist