This is the first year in my life that I'm going to miss Christmas with my family. A few weeks ago my 82-year-old mother-in-law developed a serious circulatory problem in her leg and had to be hospitalized. She'll be fine, but needs the family to rally around her as she transitions back home from the nursing facility where she's been recovering. So, instead of celebrating my 48th consecutive Christmas in Zanesville, Ohio, with my extended family, I'll be here at home in New York.

To be honest, the hardest part of this whole Grinchy situation was the awful task of picking up the phone and calling my dad to let him know that I wouldn't be coming home. He was clearly disappointed but, being one of the most optimistic souls on earth, he quickly started consoling me with stories of Christmas's we've shared over the years.

There was the time that the Christmas tree we cut down from our farm was so lopsided we couldn't keep it standing upright and my mom resorted to simply propping it up in the corner. There was the time that my bother (then age 3) got up before everyone else, found his new teddy bear, and flushed it down the toilet to see if it could swim - thus thoroughly clogging the one and only toilet for a household of eight people. Then there was the year that my sister's new hamster escaped and chose to emerge from under an armchair ... between my grandmother's feet!

Then my dad pointed out that, without fail, my mom always insisted on putting a tangerine in the toe of each of the stockings my brothers and sisters and I hung on the mantle on Christmas Eve. He explained that when she was growing up in the Great Depression my grandfather could only find part-time work at the steel mill and, in some years, a fresh tangerine was the most exotic present he could afford. So she passed the tradition along to us.

A tangerine. It's not a fancy or rare fruit. I probably pass by hundreds of them at my neighborhood market every day. But my dad reminded me that what I may have considered a nice little stocking stuffer was my mother's way of teaching me to stop and appreciate the little things in my life.

So what does this have to do with HR?

I think that we're all pretty exhausted from seemingly endless pressures that this prolonged recession has placed on us. We've executed downsizings and 401(k) match freezes. We've cut back on hours and asked our employees - and ourselves - to solely perform the tasks that entire departments used to cover. We've seen training budgets cut, had the ethics and competence of our senior managers questioned when our companies haven't performed well, and seen the retirement savings of our long-term employees wither. All the while, we've dutifully tried to execute well, innovate and keep people engaged. And, to top it off, what we thought was going to be an economic downturn equivalent to a sprint has turned into a marathon.

So we may not be able to afford the HR equivalent of a lavish Christmas, but what about a stocking stuffer?

Here are a few "tangerines" for your stocking that I hope will serve to refresh your spirits and optimism for the new year:

The unemployment rate is now 8.6%, the lowest since early 2009, and has even dropped in 43 states,
One hundred and twenty thousand new jobs were created in November,
There are currently over 3 million unfilled jobs in the US, the most since the summer of 2008,
There were fewer incidents of companies laying off employees in the last three months since before the recession began.

Is the recession over? Most experts say we still have a long road to recovery from the loss of over 8 million jobs since 2008 ... but it's a start. It's a stocking stuffer.

Tonight, I'll be putting up my Christmas tree. I don't usually put one up, since I never spend Christmas in New York. And on Sunday you can bet I'll be enjoying my tangerine. My holiday wish is that you will be enjoying your tangerine too.

John Gibbons is the Vice President and General Manager of Research and Development at i4cp. He has been a human resources practitioner, researcher and thought leader in human capital strategy for more than 20 years. His work has been featured in hundreds of publications and news outlets around the world including the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, CEO Magazine, CNBC, CNN and National Public Radio (NPR).