Greek-American Family Hats

Greek-American family humor travels by quotation. My Big Fat Greek Wedding turned one household's habits into shared culture: Gus tracing any word back to a Greek root, and the Windex gag, which came from Nia Vardalos's real father, who used it on a wart and then started using it for everything. These Greek-American family hats are for the yiayias, pappous and grandchildren who recognize all of it from their own kitchens. The in-jokes come from lived diaspora life. Growing-up-Greek lists describe a family dog that understood Greek and a backyard Easter lamb that seemed completely normal. At Easter the red egg game, tsougrisma, has players tap eggs together, trade Christos Anesti and Alithos Anesti, and crown the last uncracked egg the winner, who is said to have good luck for the year. Name days, meanwhile, are celebrated bigger than birthdays in Greece and are still a huge deal in some Greek-American families. The collection pairs two heritage badges, YIAYIA and PAPPOU, with OPA!, the Easter greeting CHRISTOS ANESTI, the movie quote PUT SOME WINDEX ON IT, and sentence bits about Greek roots, a later and better Greek Easter, a second birthday called a name day, and a dog fluent in Greek. Nothing else in the catalogue covers this; Nana Hats and Italian-American Family belong to other traditions. Every design is custom embroidered on an unstructured dad hat, made for festival season, Greek Orthodox Easter and the grandparent who deserves a hat of their own.