Split decisions

Next Thursday, Sandy and Steve Flemer of Burlington, Vt., will christen the dining room of their new home with their first Thanksgiving as a married couple. They'll cook together, enjoy the company of Sandy's parents, and toast to the good fortune of their marriage, which is less than six months old. But something big will be missing: their children.

Five-year-old Ethan, Sandy's son from a previous marriage, will be with his dad. Oskar, Steve's 10-year-old son, will be with his mom.

Ditto for the first part of Christmas. Both boys will spend Christmas Eve and morning with their other parent. At noon, as stipulated in a legal document, Steve will pick up Oskar. At 2 p.m., also per a legal agreement, Sandy will get Ethan.

''It will be the first Christmas morning I won't wake up with him. That will be hard," she says, fighting tears. ''Who knows how many more years he'll believe in Santa?"

Next year, the arrangements will flip.

Such is the fractured and often complicated holiday life of a stepfamily, where simple things such as the timing of Thanksgiving dinner or the decorations on the Christmas tree can be a source of sadness or contention.

''Is this perfect?" asks Steve. ''No. Is it fair? Yes. Especially for the children."

Fairness, along with another F-word, flexibility, are keys for stepfamily success at the holidays.

''Whatever your expectations are in the first few years, they won't be met. Without flexibility, everyone is that much more unhappy," says former family judge Barbara LeBey of Atlanta, author of ''Remarried with Children" (Bantam). ''Post the word on your fridge in the run-up to the holidays so you can stare at it every day," she suggests, only partly in jest.

Perhaps your family has a tradition of volunteering at a soup kitchen on Christmas Day. You assume your new wife and her children will join you, but their tradition is to stay in their pajamas all day. Cheerfully take your children and meet up with your wife and her children later.

''There's this fantasy that everything has to be together. It doesn't," says LeBey. ''If a father's children don't want to go to the stepmother's mother, who they don't even know, what's the point of insisting? Why can't the stepmother go to her family, and the father and his children go to his?"

A stepmother who doesn't have children of her own may be surprised at how sad a spouse is to not be with his children. ''She's thinking, 'Why isn't he happy? We're together,' " says marriage and family therapist Judy Osborne, director of Stepfamily Associates in Brookline.

That thinking misses an important point: This new family is founded on loss.

''The family a child knew is gone. Holidays are an emotional confrontation of that," says communication specialist Dawn O. Braithwaite, a professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln whose specialty is stepfamilies. ''The older the children are when this new family is created, the harder it will be because the more they can remember the old family."

Even adults who are very much in love can feel sad just knowing how hard it is on their children. As a child, Sandy Flemer remembers hating to travel on Christmas Day, even to visit grandparents. ''I just wanted to be cozy at home," she says. Now she hates that Ethan must. On the other hand, she and Steve and their exes worked hard to sync holiday schedules so their stepfamily can be together. ''These are sacrifices you just have to make," she says.

A child's grief typically surfaces as anger at a stepparent. Not being able to wake up in the bed where they woke up for all the Christmas mornings of their life; leaving behind a parent who has not remarried and who they perceive will be lonely; not seeing their friends -- any of this can be blamed on a stepparent: ''This is happening because of you! I hate you!" Even for teens, the first few years of holidays after a parent's remarriage is a harsh blow to magical thinking that parents might reconcile.

For the stepparent, this is not the time to take offense, reprimand children, be angry with your spouse, or insist on anything other than civilized behavior. That insistence, by the way, should come from the parent, not the stepparent, and be as specific as possible: ''You don't have to kiss her, but can you shake her hand, or look her in the eyes and say thank you?"

Children who pose the most challenge tend to be 12 to 15 years old. ''They have the least control over their emotions," says LeBey.

No matter what their ages when a stepfamily is formed, it can take three or four years before feelings mellow and a holiday begins to feel natural. Children of any age tend to be less resentful if:

They are part of the process. Ask every child to e-mail you what he or she would miss most if it wasn't on the Thanksgiving table, and promise you'll have it. (If it's something you don't' know how to make, ask them to help you cook/buy it.) Do the same for Christmas: ''What ritual would you miss most?"

''It could be as simple as a family snowball fight, but if you don't ask, you'll never know," says Osborne.

Ask members of each original family to write down all the traditions that are important to them. Put each group's in a different paper bag, then pick an agreed-to number. Have a meeting after the holidays to evaluate how they went.

Also, invite the children to help create new traditions. Even what feels divisive at first -- splitting the tree down the middle with each family having a half to decorate, or having two trees, one for each family -- can become a tradition over time.

Fairness rules. ''Even 6-year-olds understand the concept of what's fair and what isn't," says Braithwaite. If gift-giving will change, say so: ''Each child won't have as many presents, because we have more children to buy for. But we promise to be fair to everyone." Make sure grandparents and extended family know it's important to you that they treat all the children equally.

They feel supported. When a child of any age balks (''This is stupid; I won't do it!"), assume that he's suffering, not that he's being difficult. Don't insist he conform. ''It's a cry for understanding, not discipline," says LeBey. Not that you ignore the behavior: Her parent should take her aside and say, ''I know how hard this is for you, but you still can't be rude like that." Offer to do something, just the two of you: ''Let's get some fresh air, let's take a walk."

Whether there is a gift for the stepparent, especially a stepmom, is the most common source of hard feelings. The stepmom may think her stepchildren and her spouse are uncaring; the children may feel that giving her a gift would be disloyal to their other parent. LeBey tells adults to hash this out beforehand.

''No parent should force gift-giving on an unwilling child," she says. ''The stepparent needs to know that, not take it personally, and not make an issue of it during the gift exchange." Osborne would let a child know that you have a gift available for her to give at the last minute in case she changes her mind.

Speaking of gifts, a slightly embarrassed LeBey confesses that for her first Christmas as a stepmother (she had two children, her husband, now of 30 years, had four), ''I bribed happiness out of everyone. I made them write out their lists and I got everybody two or three things off the top. I couldn't afford it, but I did it anyway."

Did it work?

''It was one of the better holidays we had," she says.

Contact Barbara Meltz at meltz@globe.com.

BYBARBARAF.MELTZ|GLOBESTAFF