NO FLAMES OF ANY KIND in a nylon/polyester tent, please. Have you ever seen nylon burn? Have you ever touched the melted nylon while melting the ends of nylon rope. It is excrutiatingly painfull. If the material ignites, you simply will not have sufficient time to escape before your body is coated with burning melted plastic. Not pretty.

Cooking should be done in the open or under a tarp of sufficient height to prevent disaster. You'll know what I mean if you've ever seen a Coleman gas stove flare up underneath a low-lying dining fly - exciting!

If it is that cold outside I do not want to close off the vents in my tent because that will result in a tremendous amount of condensation on the interior surfaces of the tent and fly. If anything I tend to open the vents up even more. Having the moisture (being wet) is much worse than being cold.

The desire to have a tent's fly large enough to come close to the ground is to prevent water from entering the tent during driving rains, NOT to reduce ventilation in order to make the tent warmer.

The tent is there to protect you from precipitation, wind, blowing snow/rain, and small critters, it is not intended to keep you warm - that is the task of clothing and your sleeping bag & pad.

In cold weather tents are not for lounging, they are for sleeping. Get a warm sleeping bag and use it. If you wish to be more intimate, then get a double-bag or zip bags together. Do socializing while wearing sufficient clothing to stay warm.

Yes, while transitioning from sleeping bag to a clothed state you will get chilled, but that's just part of the "fun" of cold weather camping. Some people wear non-cotton long underwear while sleeping just to ease the trasition. Unfortunately mummy-shaped bags usually don't provide sufficient room for in-bag clothing changes, but you could try that too.