Australians deserve a long, hot, glorious summer of beaches and barbies and to indulge themselves in a joyous Christmas break of less-than-sober reflection, thongs-on-the-sofa relaxation and carbon-enhanced pleasures. It has been quite the year.

As we are now officially in the season of goodwill, we have instructed our editorial writer to keep his snide, polarising, sarcastic, aggrieved-conservative (‘ag-con’) criticisms for the TV chat shows or Twitter and to concentrate instead on finding the good in all those who have shaped our cultural, artistic and political lives this year.