Hook-ups can hinge on holiday approach

I’ve been seeing a lot of advertisements promoting "hook-up" outfits. One of the most active is eHarmony. They purport to match a comprehensive array of factors, achieving high degrees of compatibility for their clients.

I know they cover a wide range of things but bet they miss one truly important data tidbit, especially relevant at this time of the year. Most of you know Christmas can be a real burden on relationships when family customs clash.

The seminal question is, "When does Santa actually come?" Some open gifts on Christmas Eve, some on Christmas morning.

It’s easier if you have one of each persuasion. Having both on one side or the other will likely create problems of Charles Dickens proportions. Bah, humbug.

Luckily I was a "morning" celebrator who married into an "eve" family. When both sets of grandparents live nearby, families perform holiday gymnastics to make the Christmas routine work for all.

Feeling obligated to surgically dissect holiday activities into perfectly equal portions creates problems. I know I went to inordinate lengths not to slight either family.

Thanksgiving wasn’t an issue. Gather at the same house or make the rounds, sequentially rewarding each holiday table with our presence. I was born with the "burp" gene so had no problem eating multiple dinners.

Being a "morning" married to an "eve" doesn’t automatically solve problems. Definitions vary. For my parents, "morning" meant "early."

They believed gifts opened by grandchildren at 8 a.m. were better than those at 11 a.m. Don’t ask me to explain the calculus. It was simply the "Gardner postulate."

So there was no sleeping late at our house. Wham, bam, see what Santa brought and hit the showers. Christmas mornings were anything but leisurely. Hopefully, throughout it all we salvaged festive fragments, independent of grandmas and grandpas.

Don’t misunderstand. Those stressful holidays with family were wonderful. Parents die, kids grow up. Truth be told, I’d give anything to again have that old scheduling problem this December.

I can’t change it, but something I can do is pass along an important suggestion to dating sites. If you ask well thought-out questions, don’t leave out important holiday queries. It can be a deal-breaker.

There’s a weird tradition in between what I’ve written about that’s beyond my understanding. Some decorate their Christmas trees after the kids have gone to bed. They’re upstairs with sugarplums while Dad and Mom are downstairs with extension cords.

There’s no way in the Wide-Wide-World of Ho-Ho-Ho I’d assemble two bicycles, a wagon and put up the tree on the same night. Speaking for myself, if I paid to join one of those places and got such a crazy cyber mate, I’d delete her and demand a refund.

Otis Gardner’s column appears here each Wednesday. He can be reached at ogardner@embarqmail.com.