While the valley was a fairly quiet and uneventful place during the Christmas holiday week, the same can’t be said for other less fortunate locales around the world. In New York on December 20th, two police officers were shot dead ambush-style while sitting in their car after weeks of anti-police protests following a black man’s chokehold death at the hands of a white police officer. On Sunday,an AirAsian plane went missing, with it 162 people. “We expect it is in the sea, so for now (we think) it is on the sea floor,” the head of Indonesia’s search and rescue agency told reporters. In Greece, also on Sunday, a ferry caught fire, resulting in the death of eight people(as of The Valley Echo’s press time) and the  dramatic rescue of hundreds of others.As far as we at The Valley Echo know, there was the report of one dramatic car accident in Dry Gulch on Friday, December 19th, but miraculously, those involved walked away with only minor injuries (see this Friday’s Pioneer for the full story). Otherwise, the biggest news was that the valley was graced with a white Christmas in the nick of time and the ice on Lake Windermere finally became thick enough for the Whiteway to be carved across its frozen surface, just in time for the planned January 3rd celebration of the Guinness World Record (don’t miss it!).If you were keeping tabs on the above-mentioned international news items, you may have also come across a video of the Queen of England’s annual Christmas address. Though likely scripted to death by a slew of talented ghost writers, her message did come across as emotional and honest, starting and ending with reference to a statue in the U.K. inspired by the story of a woman who crossed Europe on foot to find her husband after the Great War. Casts of the same statue can be found in Belfast and Berlin. It’s known as “Reconciliation”— which then became the theme for the queen’s Christmas message.She also touched on the unique moment in history when, during the First World War in 1914, German and Allied soldiers stopped fighting for a day on December 25th and crossed enemy lines to celebrate Christmas together. You can find the video of her address to the Commonwealth on cbc.ca. As part of the Commonwealth, Canada is still loyal to its queen, and her holiday message this year might give even staunch anti-royalists an inkling as to why.