An estimated 90 million of us will drive 50 miles or more during this holiday season, and recent years’ gnashings of teeth at the pump are being replaced with smiles. The price of gasoline is down 36 percent since April, to a national average of around $2.40 per gallon, with some cities reporting prices of below $2. That price, which includes paying for the crude oil and refining it into petrol, shipping costs and state and federal taxes, about equals only the tax component extracted from British motorists for every gallon of petrol, as they call it, that they buy. Costs of making the stuff are extra.

The story of oil and gasoline is only one part of the story of the advances — some would say onward rush — of the U.S. economy. In 2008 only 75 million Americans, some 15 million less than this year, took to the roads during the holiday season — many were out of work or too strapped to bear the costs of travel. It might be too soon to revive Franklin Roosevelt’s 1936 campaign song, “Happy Days Are Here Again,” trumpeting the decline in the unemployment rate from 24.9 percent when he took office in 1933 to a mere 16.9 percent, but if things keep going as they are — more on that next week — we might be humming it at this time next year.