As someone who was away for the Wintersday festival, it saddens me that I cannot get the rewards in any other way 
I received Orphan Laine’s Letter, which directs me to my Home district. Upon entering though, there is no sign of Grawnk around anywhere (I had someone take me to the spot where he should spawn).
The Wiki Warming Grawnk’s Heart page indicates it should still be possible but I’m fairly certain it is not any more.
Can there be a method for obtaining the rewards, much like the Living Story 1 rewards panel at the Laurel merchant? In particular, it feels like the Wintersday Tree of Generosity and Star of Gratitude are both unbelievably useful items I would make use of daily, though the title is fluff.
In asking via map chat, I received many responses of people in the same situation!
“There’s no lag but what we make.” – biofrog
This is what support told me today
Thank you for contacting the Guild Wars 2 Support Team.
If you made some progress during the Wintersday, you can continue the quest for the missing ornaments and bring back the spirit of Wintersday to those children. They won’t mind how much you take to get the tree decoration back. However, it is not possible to have a fresh start with this collection if you didn’t respond to the children’s call.
“If only ANet had some kind of forum they could use to communicate with us……”
“ANet. They never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity to not mess up.”
Mod “Posts created to cause unrest with unfounded claims are not allowed” lmao
The star is useful if you are consistently generating an excess supply of empyreal fragments. The tree isn’t all that useful. You can get the equivalent of a year’s worth of gifts for around 15g.
Well RNG is RNG – the person who just showed me where Grawnk spawns did have the tree, which I picked up a Gift from and after opening/salvaging it gave me 34 of the Pristine snowflakes alone! Came to 73 silver, just from one tree gift. I do have an excess of emp fragments also.. some 20-ish stacks I think
This is what support told me today
Thank you for contacting the Guild Wars 2 Support Team.
If you made some progress during the Wintersday, you can continue the quest for the missing ornaments and bring back the spirit of Wintersday to those children. They won’t mind how much you take to get the tree decoration back. However, it is not possible to have a fresh start with this collection if you didn’t respond to the children’s call.
Sadly this seems like two very useful items that are ‘lost to the ethers’ if they can’t be added to the Laurel merchant.. They managed to add the Krait Obelisk Shard to the merch tho, and that’s very similar.
“There’s no lag but what we make.” – biofrog
what did u salvage to get 34 pristine snowflakes?
Hmm to be honest I don’t know.. I definitely didn’t have any in inventory before hand, and most definitely had 34 after. Sadly I’ve no way of going back in the game log to find out.. Wiki seems so suggest it isn’t possible
ANET, how about adding local file logging for the chat tabs! 
“There’s no lag but what we make.” – biofrog
You can’t salvage for flakes, but they did drop (in sometimes large and random quantities like 34)
“A conquered people will always resist you,
Edair. But allies-allies will fight by your side”~Cobiah Mariner
They really should make this available for Laurels or at least make it available again next wintersday – and confirm that this will happen.
I’m all for keeping some content temporary, but after all previous rewards of this kind have been available on the Laurel merchant, just suddenly popping an event where you don’t get anything if you happened to miss it makes no sense at all. All or nothing, if some temporary rewards stay available, all have to stay.
regardless of this, ways to get rid of this enormous spam in ascended crafting materials should never have been event-bound in the first place. Pretty much every active player had more of these materials than they will ever use within a month of them being released – now just throwing drops away to keep them from piling up.
Yes exactly I agree 100% with you, I made a thread yesterday asking to bring it back in some way I was jumped for being “entitled” or that “I have right to this item”
Hopefully the right person see’s out post/threads on this then nudges someone to make this happen.
“If only ANet had some kind of forum they could use to communicate with us……”
“ANet. They never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity to not mess up.”
Mod “Posts created to cause unrest with unfounded claims are not allowed” lmao