January, the dawn of a brand new year which surely should be an optimistic and exciting time, with the prospects of a new year emerging.

The reality is that January is rarely seen that way by many people, and is commonly perceived as one of the (if not the) worst months of the year.

The more I thought about the subject, the more reasons I found as to why this melancholy month is held in such regard.

First and foremost is the hangover of Christmas – both metaphorical and literal for some.

It's almost a month-long version of the day you take all of the Christmas decorations down and all that's left is the barren shell where joy had been for almost all of December.

In essence, January is the month we use to re-adjust to dull, regular life, yet is that much worse due to the juxtaposition it has to December.

Another reason is the lack of all and any shared events - while this changes from country-to-country, January generally holds no holiday or celebration, unlike the two months on either side of it with December's aforementioned Christmas and February's Valentine's Day. January simply cannot compete with the lack of international holidays contained within its 31 days.

To top it all off, it's still the middle of winter.

So on top of the lack of any universal celebrations and the aftermath of December, it's still freezing cold and the sun only decides to stay from eight until five o'clock, January doesn't even want us to comfortably not enjoy the month, it wants us to go through it bleak, blind and abundantly chilly.

With all that in mind, it's easy to see why January is such a blue month – both through the mood and the cold – but all in all let's be hopeful that 2017 itself is a halfway decent year, and try not to let the January blues get us down.