If there was an open fire, I’m sure chestnuts would have been roasting on it. Instead, we had to settle for a gas fireplace and a chimney wrapped in stone, steel and glass. I’m sure the insurance adjusters are pleased.

I remember a comedian once making fun of wrapping a dried-out pine tree in substandard wiring, drinking and then hoping for a stranger to surreptitiously infiltrate your home. Perception is so often the most important part of the story, especially during the holidays.

The two couples sitting at the bar couldn’t have been more different. One couple had obviously been married for some time and the other was newly dating. Ironically, it was the younger couple who were married, and the older couple who were dating. Perception, right?

These facts weren’t necessarily observable, but they were discussable, which is exactly where that information came from. Just a reminder, if the bartender can hear your drink order or your food order from where they’re standing, the likelihood is that they can hear everything else you say, too.

First, wine was ordered, then mixed drinks.

“We should take you guys to Vegas,” said the younger man in the younger couple.

“I’m not going to Vegas,” said the older woman in the older couple.

“Come on,” said the younger man.

“We’re too old for that,” said the older man.

“But, we want to party with you guys,” continued the younger man, turning his backwards hat around frontwards.

Maybe that was unconscious, or maybe it was in response to something the older woman had said earlier. But it was something that I noticed, and so did the older woman.

Playful flirting often happens at bars. I’m not judging it, but I know it happens:

“Can I get you something?” will ask the bartender.

“What’s on the menu?” will ask the guest.

“Whatever you want,” will continue the bartender.

“Anything?” will ask the guest.

Sometimes it ends there. And sometimes it doesn’t. In my line of work, you learn not to take things personally, or too seriously. Guests on the other hand …

“I’m not going to Vegas with you guys,” said the older woman.

“What if we pay for your flight?” asked the younger man, laughing.

“What do you take me for?” asked the woman.

“I’m just offering,” said the man, and his wife nodded.

That kind of playful back and forth is often the backbone of the bar experience: “crazy conversations with strangers,” a friend of mine once said. Maybe someone should write a book about it? Or a column?

Right about then, shots were ordered and ride-shares were clarified. And then shots were poured. It was now man, woman, man and woman at the bar. So, the younger man in the younger couple sat directly next to the older woman in the older couple — closer and closer as it turned out. The younger woman didn’t seem to mind, but the older man did.

Eventually, the conversation got away from Vegas, and then it went right back there.

“Come on, you’d be fun in Vegas,” said that young man.

“No.”

“What would it take?”

“Maybe a private jet,” said the woman.

It wasn’t clear if that was a joke, or an offer.

“Well, now at least we’re negotiating,” said the younger man, laughing out loud.

I learned long ago not to judge other people’s relationships. What works for them might not work for you — and vice versa.

By now, the older man was standing, proving that not everything works for everyone in every relationship. It was clear that he wanted to leave — at least it was clear to me. To his companions, new and old, not so much. Eventually, he went to the bathroom.

“Here’s my card,” said the younger man, offering the older woman his business card.

“For that flight to Vegas,” he added.

She looked around, and then took his card and put it in her purse.

I’m not sure what happened after that, because I was uncharacteristically working the day shift. And I had to leave at 3 p.m.

Leaving me with these thoughts:

• Maybe all four of them went to Vegas. Or perhaps three of them did. Maybe even just two.

• Whatever you do during the holidays, don’t drink and drive, no matter what time it is.

• “Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough,” once opined George Bernard Shaw.

• Age is relative, to you, to me and, yes, even to two sets of strangers sitting at a bar.

• “We have established what you are, now we are just quibbling over price” is the punchline to an old bar joke.

Jeff Burkhart is the author of “Twenty Years Behind Bars: The Spirited Adventures of a Real Bartender, Vol. I and II,” the host of the Barfly Podcast on iTunes (as seen in the NY Times) and an award-winning bartender at a local restaurant. Follow him at jeffburkhart.net and contact him at jeffbarflyIJ@outlook.com