I’m taking a short blogging break over Christmas and will be back at my browser on Wednesday the 28th. If you’re looking for some great reading about happiness at work over the holidays, here are some excellent blogposts.

Bob Sutton has evidence that smiling makes you happy and likable as Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project claimed. It’s one of those “of course it’s true, but it’s still really nice to have studies backing it up” deals.

David Maister tells the story of a truly courageous leader, “Jay Bertram, president of the TBWA office in Toronto, who asked his people to evaluate him and offered to resign if he did not improve how well he performed his role as their leader.”

The Slacker Manager tells us how to write holiday cards to staff. “My ink-stained fingers are evidence of the labor of the last four hours. Only fifteen cards to show for it, but each is different and personal (no “Good job, Bob??? here).” It’s too late for this Christmas (unless you’re a really last-minute kind of person), but there are some great tips there.

The Brazen Careerist thinks financial freedom is outdated and that we should go with optimism instead. “HELLO???? Can everyone standing in line to buy a Lear Jet please get a reality check? You do not need a plane to be happy, you need a plane to go visit the people who make you happy. A jet is not an expression of financial freedom. It’s an expression of your decision to not live near the people who mean the most to you.”

Stephen Shapiro has a great post on allowing yourself to feel the pain in your life. “In college, I made this mix tape, aptly titled “The Depression Tape.??? It had the sappiest, saddest music you could imagine, containing nearly every song performed by Bread, Joe Cocker’s “You Are So Beautiful to Me,??? and Elton John’s sadder songs. You get the point.”

Steve Roesler at All Things Workplace interviews some weirdo who calls himself The Chief Happiness Officer. Sheeeeesh, there are some strange people out there.

And here are some great articles about happiness at work:
Kenny Moore Held a Funeral to mark his company’s transition to a new organization. “When it was over, the CFO said to me, “You have some set of balls. Nobody but you could have gotten away with this.” But I didn’t feel like I had been very brave. People are dying to be connected, invited, involved. They don’t like having things shoved down their throats in a formulaic way. They show energy and commitment when they can be players and influence an initiative’s outcome.”

Why we evolved altruism 12.000 years ago. “If an individual defended the group but was killed, any genes that the individual shared with the overall group would still be passed on.”

How economists measure happiness. “Happiness is a big question both for researchers and for policy wonks these days, so it is slightly discomfiting to reflect that people may not even know the answer to the simple question, ‘Are you happy?’”