A phrase known to most people i know through the
Kurt Vonnegut book
Breakfast of Champions, where it was featured on a
calming blue floating
scarf.
My father gave me the background info that this was the tagline for an old ad for laundry detergent, or maybe washing machines - yeah, i think washing machines - which would do the laundry for the poor, beleaguered housewife. Since Monday was apparently traditionally washing day, and washing was not traditionally a fun task, washing day was Blue Monday. As we all know, the quality of our lives has increased hundredfolds since then.
Since this is a time-sensitive cultural reference, the recent film adaptation of Breakfast of Champions had the depressed, chemical-dependant wife of the main character murmur Goodbye, Blue Monday! while vacantly watching television ads for wonder cures - pretty much the same thing. A(n empty?) promise of (magical) deliverance (through science or technological advances) from the everyday, mundane and tedious world.