It wasn’t all bad this year. Here are five things worth celebrating.

The best thing you can say about 2017 is that it had a comparatively tame slate of celebrity deaths. Over the past 12 months, it has often been hard to see past the dustbin fires that pass for mainstream politics, race relations and the behaviour of prominent men. Let’s be honest, we are in need of distraction. No, wait. Put away that fidget spinner. We mean distraction in the form of words and pictures.

Believe it or not, 2017 has not been entirely shoddy. Let’s reflect together on five joyful things that happened this year and are worth celebrating.

One prophetic Simpsons quote has been especially apt in recent times: “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, democracy simply doesn’t work.” But the words of newsreader Kent Brockman were contradicted gloriously Down Under in 2017. A postal survey revealed 61.6 per cent of Australians were in favour of the same-sex marriage bill, and parliament duly waved it through amid jubilant waving of rainbow flags. MP Mr Tim Wilson’s subsequent proposal to partner Mr Ryan Bolger in the House of Representatives melted even the stoniest of hearts.

“Musky” is not an adjective with positive connotations. Generations to come may have to revise its meaning in light of the thrilling work being done by Mr Elon Musk, who, in 2017, with his company SpaceX, seemed determined to make even his most outlandish “what if” thought experiments a reality. This year the private spaceflight company has made a number of incremental steps towards fulfilling its goal of sending humans to Mars. On current evidence, that day cannot come soon enough.

In further exciting extraterrestrial news, we had a special cigar-shaped visitor in October. The catchily named 1I/2017 U1 (’Oumuamua) asteroid was detected and astronomers confirmed a month later that it had come from another solar system. ’Oumuamua (let’s call it space turd for short) was later scanned for alien transmissions when it had reached twice the distance from earth as the sun. Scientists are yet to announce whether its speed in passing our planet is due to a similar scan of earthly transmissions and hearing only Mr Luis Fonsi’s 4.5-billion-view YouTube hit “Despacito”.

In an era in which humans use Twitter as the wrestling ring for a seven billion-participant Royal Rumble, tales of co-operation are glady received. So here’s one to warm your cockles. In Florida last July a family got into trouble swimming in the Gulf of Mexico. Six were in danger of drowning in suddenly severe currents until dozens of concerned beachgoers organised a human chain, stretching from the shore to the stricken swimmers. “Maybe we haven’t lost all hope in this world,” said Mr Derek Simmons, who was involved in the rescue mission.

The era of the monolithic cultural event is behind us. It’s unlikely we’ll ever have another Beatlemania, another Live Aid, another Star Wars. All right, that last one isn’t technically true, but it’s certainly rare to come across anything that unites critics and public by dint of its quality. Mr Jordan Peele’s Get Out won hearts and minds by ticking every available box – funny, pleasantly scary, beautifully shot, superbly acted, flawlessly scripted – while making uncomfortably salient points about the relationship between liberal whites and black people in the US. An instant modern classic.

Keep up to date with The Daily by signing up for our weekly email roundup. Click here to update your preferences