Holiday Dating Recipe: 5 Holiday Date Ideas That Don’t Suck.

Oh the hol­i­days.  It’s a time for friends and fam­ily, shar­ing and car­ing puppy dogs and all sorts of other things that make a Hall­mark moment into a greet­ing card… It’s also a time to get cozy, if a bit frisky, with the per­son you’ve been dat­ing.  What can you do, other than, rais­ing the tem­per­a­ture at home, doing things your folks would be embar­rassed to know about?  I’m glad you asked.  I’ve got a few ideas that aren’t terrible.

1. Vol­un­teer — Some peo­ple think it’s hard to find a place to vol­un­teer some­where dur­ing the hol­i­days. Not true. There are many orga­ni­za­tions, maybe even your employer, that are happy to enroll the will­ing masses into some free labor.  You’ll have fun and feel good about your­selves when you and your sig­nif­i­cant other are help­ing a cause you’re both pas­sion­ate about.  Check with your local churches, shel­ters, YMCAs and your employer.  Chances are you’ll find some­one that needs your help.
2. Go for a run — This seems odd, but around the hol­i­days there seems to be a lot of orga­ni­za­tions that put together hol­i­day races or char­ity events involv­ing rig­or­ous activ­ity not con­fined to the bed­room.  This year I’ll be par­tic­i­pat­ing in a 10k with the gal I’m see­ing.  In fact, it’s this week!  I should prob­a­bly train for it at some point.  When you get the blood flow­ing and get a bit sweaty, it can be a bit of a turn on and you’ll feel good about yourself.
3. What’s with all the damn lights??? — The defacto stan­dard of the hol­i­day sea­son. Thou shalt see light!  Christ­mas lights are all over the place.  Some peo­ple get really passionate/​obsessive about their lights. How can you do your part to encour­age this depraved behav­ior?  Take your date to go see all the pretty lights as you ooh and ahhh and mar­vel at how much these peo­ple pay in elec­tricty and also all the light pol­lu­tion that they emit.  These peo­ple are in every city and they live within close prox­im­ity to one another.  It is truly one of nature’s great oddities.
4. Pick out a tree — I know, I know.  This doesn’t seem all that orig­i­nal and it’s not, I’m cer­tain.  Tak­ing your date out to get a tree is always great fun.  It’s also an oppor­tu­nity to make your date self con­scious by tak­ing a dig at their tree selec­tions.  Sure, that sounds mean, but if you’re a guy, you’re going to have to fas­ten the tree to the car and do the brunt of the work, there­fore, the other per­son in the equa­tion has earned a few ver­bal barbs.
5. Fire, movies, booze n’ food n’ some lovin’ — Crass?  Oh sure.  I’ve always been crass, but I can be a roman­tic, too!  I rec­om­mend light­ing a fire (in the fire place, peo­ple), get­ting a few hol­i­day related movies like: ‘Hustler’s XXX-​​mas in Mem­phis’ or ‘Sey­mour Butts — a XXXmas Story.’  Get some wine, boxed if you must, and then get a few bags of “Tos,” as in: Dori­tos, Fritos and Chee­tos and you’re set!

If these ideas don’t make you feel all warm and fuzzy this hol­i­day, then the ter­ror­ists have won and lit­tle Timmy will not be a happy camper this year.

Related posts:

1. Dat­ing Recipes: the Artsy Cul­tural Date Thing.
2. Dat­ing Recipes 101: Beyond the First Date