As the year comes to a close, the subject of Christmases past again wanders into private thoughts, family conversations and meditative remembrances. It seems fitting, therefore, to encore last year’s tour of the Valley’s past through the Wet Mountain Tribune archives, in quest of Christmas holiday reporting. Arbitrarily, but not capriciously, we chose to roam the editions published during the turn of the century, 1900 to 1901, and then took another look at the influenza years, 1918-1920, this time with an eye to how conventional Christmas joy and hope were observed in the acknowledgement of a horrific war and of a horrific pandemic. The first matter that leapt off the pages at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century was the rough and…