These days, some out-and-out positivity is perhaps out of character for me. I tend to view our politics and the world more broadly with considerable alarm.

My morning routine most often consists of reading for a solid 60 or 90 minutes, all online, all news and commentary from a variety of publications. As this period draws to a close, my wife will usually offer some comment to the effect of, “So, I see you took your daily depressant.”

The quip is rather appropriate as I immerse myself in the news of the day. Plenty of mental health experts advise a limit to such exposure. But that does not work for me or fit who I am. Moreover, walling oneself off from some outrage or brutality does not mean it is not all too real for those in the immediate crosshairs.

But that immersion and the observations that make their way into these columns can occupy much of the year. It is also important to occasionally shift gears and take note of the good news that goes along with the beauty in the world. And what better time to do so than during this holiday week?

To add some additional light to this darkest time of the year, let me call out some of the virtues and positivity of these past twelve months.

China’s carbon dioxide emissions seem to have peaked in 2025 and have since been slowly declining. Despite forecasts to the contrary, no major hurricane struck the U.S. this year, though that is of little consolation to residents of Jamaica, Cuba and other Caribbean locales.

Who knows how long it will endure or what the future holds, but at last there is a ceasefire in Gaza. Maria Corina Machado escaped Venezuela to rejoin her family and accept the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo. A Chicagoan and a baseball fan, White Sox, not Cubs, sits atop St. Peter’s Throne.

After a start to the year in which many institutions displayed all of the structural integrity of a Kmart suitcase, a good number of law firms and top-tier universities reversed course to discover some backbone and conviction.

The Supreme Court appears ready to rule that President Donald Trump’s worldwide tariffs fall far outside of his emergency powers. In a case it declined to hear, the Court left alone the decade-old Obergefell ruling legalizing gay marriage. That is one clock that did not need to be set back.

While many of our democratic institutions are under severe stress, voters again displayed the instinct for course correction and bringing the pendulum back toward the center. Out-of-power Democrats effectively ran the table in the limited number of off-year elections.

Trump’s approval ratings have ebbed and ebbed again. With every passing day, he takes on an extra degree of lame duck status. Cracks are showing in his historic hold on the Republican Party. How many of you had on your 2025 bingo card that he would have a bitter, public falling out with Marjorie Taylor Greene?

Republicans in the Indiana state legislature, overwhelmingly dominant by numbers, withstood intense pressure from Trump and their own supine governor to blow the whistle on the orgy of nakedly partisan, mid-decade gerrymandering. Political courage may be in retreat, but it is not fully extinguished.

Democrats slowly, tentatively emerged from their shell-shocked dismay to engage a needed discussion on the topic of abundance, fueled by a book with that single-word title. More and more among their ranks are realizing, even in tepidly so, that their party of lofty ideals has become a party of endless, gripping, paralyzing process.

Peak woke has come and gone. It leaves behind a heightened awareness of matters of inclusion and equity without all of the excess of zaniness, absolutism, group identity and language policing.

Legal U.S. resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia will spend this Christmas a free man following a wrongful deportation and a nightmare of bad faith on the part of one government official after another.

The horrifying assassination of Charlie Kirk brought to America’s living rooms the calm, measured, healing presence of the nation’s best governor, Utah’s Spencer Cox.

On that topic of healing, the remarkable display of Christian forgiveness on the part of Erika Kirk placed her in sharp contrast with the hateful, retributory rhetoric of the president her husband had championed.

When malignant antisemitism reached “down under” to a Chanukah gathering on Sydney’s Bondi beach, a hero emerged to wrestle a long-barreled gun from one of the attackers. Disarming both stereotypes and assumptions, that savior was none other than Ahmed Al Ahmed, a Muslim of Syrian origin.

May this gentleman recover swiftly from his wounds.

2025 saw no shortage of trouble and threats. But it also produced abundant goodness that merits recognition and celebration. Wishing you, dear readers, all the joy and merriment this season can bring.

Eric Sondermann is a Colorado-based independent political commentator. He writes regularly for ColoradoPolitics and the Gazette newspapers. Reach him at EWS@EricSondermann.com; follow him at @EricSondermann