Dear Rachel,
Each year at this time I feel overtaken by a kind of sadness that I can never put my finger on, and it’s back this year and worse. You offer advice on everything else. What’s your advice on this feeling I have? Sign me Bluer Than Ever

Dear Bluer,
Lifting spirits is not my field, but I can say I do share some of your sadness. I think it relates to a certain dread from experiencing the end of something, amid all the holiday celebration.

We are closing out another year of our lives, and we can’t help but look back and wonder what we made of that time and what promises we made to ourselves that we did not keep.

But I don’t think it does much good to dwell on that sadness when there are so many positive things to celebrate.

First up, we are looking into a new year, and like all new years it is a time of hope and promise. We can again set out our vows to be better people, and once again we have a clean slate before us.

We can celebrate the joy of the holidays that we see all around us, and we can celebrate, if a bit more tentatively, the slowly improving U.S. economy.

Every day brings new jobs and the forming of new enterprises that promise to create yet more new jobs. Like all healings it takes time, but we are healing as a nation.

We can celebrate the return of our troops from Iraq after a decade and many thousands of lost lives, ours and theirs.

We can celebrate our families and friends, the people who have given so much meaning to our lives over the years, the good ones and the bad ones.

On a lighter note, we can celebrate the return of Howard Stern, king of all media, to that most powerful medium of all, television, as a judge on "America's Got Talent."

Will he run his mouth off and talk dirty, causing a huge media ruckus and an irate told-you-so from the Parents Television Council? Or will he play it cool, acting the perfect gentleman that he is not, just to put his thumb in the eye of the PTC?

We can celebrate that Donald Trump, though rebuffed in his bid to moderate a debate among Republican candidates, is still considering a return to the campaign trail in his own bid for the Oval Office.

We can celebrate Kim Kardashian's continued search for love. That girl won't let another brief marriage slow down her pursuit of fame or the perfect mate.

Will she marry again before the year is out, to yet more great hoopla? Let us not dismiss the possibility.

Or we can choose not to celebrate Howard, Donald and Kim.

The important thing is that this year is over, or nearly so, and that certainly lifts my spirits. I hope it does yours.

I'll see you all in January.