What do you want for Christmas? Maybe it’s the same as what I want. It’s peace. A refuge from vitriol. A haven from such absurdities as Stephen Bannon running the country and Ben Carson running HUD. A sanctuary from a nation that still appears to be fighting the Civil War in its red state/blue state configuration.

We won’t have that peace nationally. So I’m hoping we can find it here in Massachusetts. We’re in a good place. We welcome all comers. Democrats like the Republican governor, Charlie Baker. It feels as if he wants what is good for the commonwealth. Mayor Walsh also seems to promote policies good for a majority of the people.

Even if we don’t agree with these leaders on all matters, they are not corrupt, foolish, random, mean or narcissistic.

Most business leaders in Boston are also as good as you can get. They may or may not be people you’d want as friends and some of them may have inflated opinions of themselves, but as far as I can tell, no one here is running a place like Wells Fargo, where unreasonable goals set off fraud.

We can begin our peaceful, gracious, generous behavior with two items of contention—naturally they would be real estate developments. With the apparent blessing of the mayor and the Boston Planning and Development Agency, Millennium Partners wants to build a tower that, contrary to state law, will cast shadows on the Common and the Public Garden. I don’t know how, but let’s work this out.

The developers are not bad guys. They live here, and have done so for a long time. Early on they took a chance on what used to be known as the Combat Zone and built the Ritz Carlton Hotel and Residences, which helped transform that dingy neighborhood. Millennium Place may be ridiculed for its high-priced residences, but it is a substantial improvement over the mid-century Filene’s building that formerly occupied the site. And the developers saved the older Filene’s building. So they’ve not been bad for Boston.

The protectors of the Common are also not bad people. They are legitimately concerned about keeping the oldest park in the nation healthy, and that means it must have a certain amount of sunlight. The Friends of the Public Garden, which also helps keep the Common in good shape, are some of the best citizens in Boston, with selfless determination to make the parks work for Bostonians as well as the tourists who come to see what history is all about.

The other place that needs some cooperation is the Lewis Wharf Hotel. Let’s just stop the demonization of the developers and the opponents. This parking lot and the waterfront both need serious attention. I don’t have an opinion on the design but surely there can be a meeting of the minds over what is appropriate, what is a good treatment of the Harbor Walk and what will work for everyone. A hotel seems to be an appropriate use. Its design is mostly within the zoning. If people of good will can sit down and hammer out a solution, it would be good for the whole city.

This could sound fairly Pollyanna-ish. But 2016 has been such a terrible, mean, nasty piece of work on the national scene that it should end. Given our soon-to-be president’s nature, 2017 will probably not be better. Here, however, locally, we can reject that behavior. Almost all of us involved in these struggles are not in it for ourselves, but for the good of our city. Let’s sit down, agree to respect one another, and resolve disputes companionably.

We shouldn’t take the national scene as our model.