(Image credit: Getty Images)

If you're a glass-half-empty kind of person, there are plenty of dispiriting headlines these days that could ruin your holiday cheer.

Here at Kiplinger, we're more optimistic. We'd prefer to raise that half-full glass and make a toast to any of a number of important things going right in the world today. We've rounded up 12 developments, economic and otherwise, that reveal brighter days ahead in 2020. Take a look.