A Christmas Story or, God Bless You Mr. Davis

We buried my dad today: Rev. Father Anthony Sirigos—eternal be his memory. The grieving thing is still puzzling to me. Memories are coming and going with great frequency now, random, ridiculous and sublime…like life. Memories and feelings from everywhere and nowhere, mainly about family and holidays. My family life did not completely revolve around the Church because my father became a priest after I was 24 years old. That was more the case with my little sister Dimitra, who was twelve at the time. Still, some of my most powerful memories of my dad are church-related. Actually, my very first strong memory of my dad is from church. It was a bright Sunday morning and we are in the Three Hierarchs Church in Brooklyn. Me and my dad. I’m between 2 and 3 years old. My very earliest life memories, however, are of my Pappou, my father’s father: walking through the park, playing ball, eating rice pudding. My dad and Pappou were completely different people, not knowing each other for my father’s first 17 years. My Pappou had the sometimes irreverent but strong faith of a sailor; my dad was the kid with his father far away, always in church, helping, talking to the priests. Pappou didn’t know what to make of his “new” son’s desire to be a priest and his devout mother was not thrilled either, even though Greek Orthodox priests can marry and provide their parents with grandchildren. I learned about life from both of them. A nice Greek balance.

So I’m in church, a little kid standing on the pews to see what’s going on. Possibly I’m chattering away about what’s happening (can any of you imagine that?) and finally I pull on my dad’s suit jacket and whisper: “Pote tha teliosi? when will it end? ” and he whispers back “otan teliosi, when its finished,” and I say “OK”. I think I said that a few times each Sunday. I wonder sometimes if sitting near us some Greek American Hollywood screenwriter visiting his family for the weekend overheard us, the one who put the identical words in the mouths of Michaelangelo and Pope Julius, bickering over the delays in the painting of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the movie “The Agony and the Ecstasy”. It came out in 1965 and the scenes in our church began around 1963. Michaelangelo was played by Charlton Heston, one of the best-remembered actors in Greece.

In recent years I often marveled at the fights that adults have with each other: friends, family, colleagues, lovers. Some heal quickly but some wounds last a long time, fester, and infect the whole relationship, which often dies. I have observed that the healthy relationships are not the ones with less fights, because human individuals will clash with those closest to them—especially the ones they love most-- but those whose wounds heal quickly. And the wounds heal quickest when after a few minutes, or hours or days, sometimes longer, the party that struck first, or struck hardest or deepest, makes it up to the other. It’s a powerful emotion that overcomes me when I see the opposite, when two people who do care for each other and at least respect each other, do nothing to make up for the pain they have caused. No restitution. No apology, nothing. And if it happens often enough the love dies. My feelings as I observe these scenes border on anger, because it has always seemed to me SO EASY to make it up to the other person. And I realize now I learned this from my dad.

Ours was a typical close-knit Greek immigrant home, loving and strict. Dad worked two, sometimes three jobs. Mom took care of my father’s ailing mother and that was not always pleasant. There was love lots of it, but there was discipline too. Punishments abounded because there were lots of rules. Sometimes they were mildly corporal and/or harshly verbal. You didn’t see it in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, but it was there. The children sometimes thought the punishment was unfair. And we didn’t always get what we wanted (kids are raised differently today eh?) But I must have picked up very early that after a little time went by after some punishment or disappointment, dad did something special. An unexpected toy, a little 45 rpm record from Woolworth’s. Or just an outburst of singing at the dinner table. Sometimes old songs from his childhood, sometimes hymns. Especially at Christmas. My dad’s favorite carol was Oh Come All Ye Faithful. It was the first carol he sang in Church every Christmas if he was in charge, but nobody knew that was his favorite because he couldn’t quite pronounce it, so many were not sure which song it was. God bless him.

My dad made up for a lot at Christmas time. It was his favorite part of the year and it became so for me and my sisters. 1947 must have been a great time for Christmas in America. The war was over: good triumphed over evil, the depression was a painful but ever more distant memory. Great movies with Christmas themes were made: Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street. There are no coincidences as some of my friends say. Right, I respond, there is fate and there are accidents, but which are which? 1947 in my father’s life was no accident. He finally met his dad, but that was bittersweet because there were no common memories, experiences, or projects, between them. Nothing. I don’t think they wrote each other very much. But there was one thing that created a bond immediately: Pappou’s Christmas tree. It must have been quite ordinary, the typical little tree with a handful of ornaments and some lights that merchant seamen put up in the corner of their homes or rooms and which is only alive and lit up every few days or weeks when they returned from the sea. Pappou must not have had time to take it down because my dad arrived in mid January. He explained as much as he could about Christmas in America until the next winter came along. With so many awkward silences between them after they first met, it was probably their first real conversation. Dad had never seen a Christmas tree. He just left 1947 Greece. No Santa Clause, no trees, no carols—a rich Greek Orthodox tradition for celebrating Christ’s birth yes, but not the magic time of year for children that the west invented, and at 17 years old without having had a father, my dad was still very much a child. He only just got a father to teach him the life of men--his life in Greece was filled with war widows and the wives of men at sea.

In his first year in Boston whatever free time he had between school and working he spent racing around town “discovering” America. And the mysteries of American Christmas. By the following holiday season, having observed the activities and setups of the stores and civic centers, he put up his first elaborate tree. Ornaments, lights, tinsel and garlands, and the part of my father’s first Holidays in his new country that was to become his trademark: his first nativity scene. For his three Christmases in Boston the scenes were simple affairs. He rapidly mastering the secular part of the festival thanks to his working at the local Howard Johnson’s restaurant. Not too many of those left, maybe one or two? The last one in New York closed in Times Square two years ago. But they still make that ice cream: ambrosia in my family came in the form of Howard Johnsons ice cream. Pistachio. The only shade of green I really like outside of trees, and then only in ice cream. The Greek gods never had the pleasure. It was all ours. That ice cream proved we had the best daddy. Every week we had an ice cream feast.


He moved to New York in 1950 when winter in America was still a very Christmasy time –when it meant something and was a valuable if not vital part of our lives: there were now dangerous Cold War and Korean war overtones that Christmas carols drowned out for a couple of weeks. He attended the High School of Commerce and worked at various local Howard Johnsons. He finally landed at the shiny, bustling Ho Jo’s at Rockefeller Center, the one owned by the Spiropoulos family of William Spiropoulos High School in Flushing Fame. He learned a lot about being a good American, and Hellene and good Orthodox Christian from Mr. Spiropoulos. My dad was later named one of the executors of his will. That was quite an honor for a kid off the boat—its was the Queen Fredericka by the way and when dad came to America in 1959 it was owned by the Evgenides family from my dad’s birthplace, the island of Siphnos. But what he really learned from the Spiropoulos establishment was how to decorate for Christmas. Naturally—they were across the street from the capitol of Christmas in New York: Radio City Music Hall. My childhood begins and ends at Radio City. It is my first memory of a place outside my home, and when they threatened to tear it when I was 17, adulthood was banging on my door. Radio City is a magical place of holiday (Christmas and Easter) and movie memories. And the Rockettes. Some dads gave their children their old Playboy magazines when they came of age, mine introduced me to the Rockettes. Must be why I like tall women. Then again for me, all women are tall women.

The happiest times of my dad’s first years in America were when he was decorating Howard Johnsons for Christmas. Mine were helping my dad decorate at home. Now every boy believes his dad invented or was the first to do many great things. My conceit is the family nativity scene. It was NOT just a stable and manger and a couple of clay figurines. There were houses all aglow from flickering Christmas lights, trees and a sleigh pulled by 8 individual reindeer and churches, and town halls, all set on snowy, cottonball-cloth-covered boxes meant to evoke, if not the hills of Bethlehem, the dales of New England towns at Christmas. I will swear forever that until 20 or so years ago, NOBODY had anything like this in their homes. Not like dad’s. Sure some families had a stable and figurines, but that was it. Now its an industry with expensive buildings etc. People marveled at our Nativity scene with the little cardboard houses and baby Jesus, who only made his appearance in the manger on Christmas Day. Priests, family friends and cousins, Greeks and non-Greeks delighted in it, but none of them undertook to reproduce what my dad had done., not for a long time anyway. His living rooms were coming to life for Christmas since 1948. Christmas comes but one a year and in the Sirigos household, it was Paradise. And at 7 years old, miracle of miracles, a Lionel electric train appeared going round and round the tree. A huge perfect man-made circle around nature’s finest Douglas fir, sheltering baby Jesus, the Logos of the Universe, and providing a home for Santa Claus, the bringer of gifts. Isn’t that a nice bunch of archetypes Dr. Jung?

And there was Mr. Davis. God bless Mr. Davis. Eternal be his memory. He was blessed and he blessed all the children of New York and the thousands of others who visited there from across the country and around the world. Mr. Davis was the General Manager of Radio City Music Hall. To this day because of Mr. Davis the title of General Manger is wonderful and powerful to me. It is part of the mystique of being a sports fan: Brian Cashman is the GM of the Yankees, the man I hope has recovered the magic touch of his early tenure and finally stirs the pot the right way so that the Yankees return to glory in this final year of the existence of the glorious Yankee Stadium—yes they will tear down next year, every bit of it. The other side of the coin is the Knicks GM Isaiah Thomas. He is a different story. As many a manager at a greek restaurant would say: “what tha chell is gon on?”

Mr. Davis, however, was God, or pretty close to Him. He was in charge of all of it: the Rockettes dancing on the stage, the banks of multicolored lights glowing in the golden arches that continued the perfect half-circle of the proscenium arch, the sometimes thundering, sometimes whispering, shimmering and thrilling sounds of the Mighty Wurlitzer Grand Organ—which I once actually got to play, to the delight of my dad when I told him. All of it, including the endless lines that snaked around the cavernous theater (6000 people were in there, all laughing, gasping, crying and delighting at the same time—nothing like it outside Epidauros these days) was under the command of the serious Mr. Davis, who became most genial when My dad introduced him to me and my little sister Kelly and her funny white hat with the sheep ears. We were suddenly VERY important. Mr. Davis waved his influential hand and ushers immediately whisked us to the FRONT OF THE LINE. For those of you who may have stood in the rain and snow and cold for hours at Radio City, eat your hearts out. Just kidding. This would happen for a number of years without incident. Who’s my daddy? The guy who’s more powerful that Mr. Rockefeller at Rockefeller Center. I never saw any Rockefeller or Guggenheim or Astor kids getting the Mr. Davis treatment. Well, maybe they had secret passageways.

Anyway, this continued for 5 or so years, but one year, Mr. Davis was not so genial. It shook me up a bit, but I didn’t know at the time that those were tough times for the Music Hall. The crowds were not what they used to be. The management (not Mr. Davis! his staff must have let him down) picked some clunkers to show. But times and Hollywood had changed. Family movies were no longer the blockbusters that used to jam the Hall and the blockbusters of the day, the Godfather, etc, were not deemed appropriate for the Christmas or Easter Shows. The Music Hall was in danger of going the way of the original Penn Station and the great Paramount and Roxy theaters. They were going to turn it into office space! It was saved, thanks God, but in a different form. Yes the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular is spectacular, but the original Christmas show with the occasional good movies were truly wonderful. And the Rockettes are still there, taller than ever God bless ‘em. I had a cup of coffee with one once. Her name was Holly. Said so right on her RCMH jacket. She was one of the shorter ones on the left or the right side (the amazons were in the middle of the line) a quite reachable 5’6”. Holly! How’s that for the name of a girl who danced in the Christmas show, a cute recruit in the Parade of the Wooden soldiers? I forgot to tell dad about that. I wonder what else I forgot to do….

Back to the very changed Mr. Davis. Struggling to make ends meet, worried about a new generation of Rockefellers lowering the boom, literally, on the Music Hall he shook his finger at my dad: “Now Tony this is the last time.” But we were whisked to the front of the line again, my peace of mind restored. That was around 1971. Its happened again in 1972, 1973 and I think, for the last time, in 1974. Mr. Davis, God bless him some more, always said the same thing: “Now Tony this is the last time.” By that time maybe it crossed my young mind that dad was a little too pushy, but it worked. And you know what, he had a lifelong dream of becoming a priest that was obstructed by bad luck and good but sometimes oblivious parents and by 1975, with some health issues beginning to creep into his life, that dream was dead as a doornail. But he never gave up. He continued to support his family, be there for us, and serve the Church. Every Sunday we got up at 6 AM to set up the chairs for the children in the Three Hierarchs church hall for the Sunday School worship services. 6 AM, after he came home at midnight from the restaurant business on Saturday night. Many times he had to work Sunday afternoon and evening after he and my sister and I finally put away the chairs and the huge life size icons when the Sunday School children had gone home.

I imagine that if Mr. Davis is no longer with us God has put him to good use. Maybe his blend of seriousness and geniality is perfect for helping St. Peter control the line waiting to pass through the gates of Heaven. He will recognize my dad or course, with or without the beard of his priestly years, which I never quite got used to. Mr. Davis will spot him striding towards him and he will raise his sainted arm and gently point to my father and say “now Tony you’re gonna have to wait on line like everyone else.” So please pray for my dad, Father Anthony Sirigos, of Siphnos Greece, East Boston, Hell’s Kitchen, Washington Heights, Brooklyn, and the hearts of many. Pray to comfort him while he waits on what must be a long celestial line. Nobody knows what its like. Maybe it’s a cold drizzly November for his soul. His feet might be hurting after years of standing, first as a waiter on men and then as a servant of God. And pray for Mr. Davis. He might not be in the warm lobby as in the old days. He might be out in the cold too, his genial side comforting those waiting on line. Pray for all of them too.

God bless and Happy Christmas and a Happy and Healthy New Year to all.


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