So Father’s Day is less than two weeks away.  What to get Baba for Father’s Day? That’s a bit tricky if you have a Greek American Dad.  That’s because you know that your Greek American father is nothing like your American friend Stanley’s.  While Stanley’s father plays golf and wants a new club for Father’s Day, your Greek American Dad wants a new souvla. Stanley’s dad waters the lawn; your father builds it, drains it, even builds a new pergola with an ambeli (grape vine) over it.  While Stanley’s Dad might bar-b-cue pieces of delicately marinated meat on the weekend, your Baba goes out hunts the goat, slits its throat with his bare hands, makes skewers of souvlaki out of it and cooks it on the pit he constructed from left over bricks during his free time on the weekends.

That’s right. Greek American Dads are real men.  Not sissys that walk around in plaid golf shorts and have matching hand towels and spray themselves with Polo. No, your Baba wears Aqua Velva, Brut or Old Spice.  Your Baba says, “No druks in my house, katalabes?” And if you dare do, he runs after you with a butcher knife screaming, “Tha sou kopso ta achidgia kolopaido!”

Greek Dads know how the feta crumbles.  “It’s all a biziness,” he says pulling on his chest hairs. “Everythin in dis country is biziness. Even ta kolo collegia.”  Greek Dads might be rude and crude and in your face, but they never ever let their children or wives go hungry, makria apo edo.  Your Greek-American dad busted his ass waiting tables until he saved enough to buy his own diner and then worked 24/7, going home just long enough to eat pastitchtyo and galactobouriko and then pass out in front of the TV before getting up at 4:30 the next morning to open up the diner.

Greek Dads give their blood, sweat and tears to make sure their sons and daughters attend the Ivy Leagues and get a chance at the American Dream, the white collar way, not like their black-and-blue way; the way of xenichtgia, and the dark hour before the dawn when they have to scrub kitchens or peel potatoes, get underneath cars or deliver the bananas and apples on the fruit route.  Greek Dads deserve the greatest respect and they demand it; don’t you forget it (“madefakides.”)

So if you have a Greek American dad or more Greek Greeky baba, you have to be real about the presents to get him.   Greek Dads want gifts that they can use or show off their Hellenic pride or even dangle underneath the dashboard mirror and make people laugh.  Greek Dads love gadgets and amusing toys.

Gifts sort of like what they sell at Kantyli.com. Where else can you get a koutala that says “Tha fas ksilo.”  Or a personalized Greek destination sign.    Or a mug in those famous blue and white striped PJs.

We have partnered with Kantyli.com, the only place to get unique, personalized, engraved gifts exclusively for the Greek American community.  We will be giving away some of these gifts to the first 100 readers who register for the newsletter for this site.  It will be perfect to give to Baba.  And just in time for Greek American Father’s Day.