The ‘January slump’ - a Swiss invention

It is the familiar feeling after the festive season: Advent and Christmas are over, the celebrations have passed, wallets feel lighter and energy levels are low. Welcome to the “January slump”. The expression, which today primarily refers to a monetary and mood-related low after Christmas, originally comes from the Alpine tourism industry: between Christmas business and the sports holidays, many winter sports resorts remained empty – hotels and restaurants were poorly utilised in January and the tourism industry lacked income. Roots in winter tourism It is no longer possible to identify who first coined the term. What is clear is that it appeared in Swiss newspapers and magazines from the late 1940s onwards. On February 23, 1951, for example, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) wrote: “The slump after the holidays is one of the usual phenomena of the winter sports hotel industry, but it has become all the more noticeable as this so-called January slump has been extending increasingly ...