1.) People always question your ethnicity.
“What are you?” “Are you foreign?” And my personal favorite…”Are you American?”
2.) You have the loudest family ever.
3.) Your friends go into ethnic shock when they first meet your family.
4.) You spend more money on waxing than a normal person should.
Italians and Greeks are both a hairy people. And that hair not only grows everywhere, but it’s dark. Unibrows can get out of control if not taken care of.
5.) Food is basically a religion in your family.
6.) Your grandmothers want to force-feed you.
You will never go hungry because Italian and Greek grandmothers will both shove food down your throat regardless of whether or not you are hungry.
7.) People don't understand why you just can't say "Grandma"![]()
It's either Yiayia or Nonna.
8.) Your family is always in each other's business.
It's hard to have any privacy because everyone in your family knows every little thing you do and you can't hide anything because you have a million relatives.
9.) You get to celebrate two Easters.
Greek Orthodox Easter and Roman Catholic Easter tend to fall on different Sundays, so even though you have to sit through two long church services, you get feast twice as much as your friends.
10.) So much pressure about marriage.
Your Italian side pressures you to marry an Italian and your Greek side pressures you to marry a Greek.
But both sides just pray you end up married.
11.) You hold hands and dance around in circles at weddings.
Greek and Italian dancing is just part of the culture.
12.) The Italian Horn or the Evil Eye is always your go-to accessory.
They both serve the same protective purpose.
13.) People think your family is either in the Greek or Italian Mafia.
No, my dad is not the Godfather.
14.) It's weird to you when people say they aren't close to their cousins.
My cousins are basically siblings I don’t live with, and my aunts and uncles are just extensions of my parents.
15.) You get a never-ending supply of guilt from your mother and grandmother.
Italian and Greek women both love to pull the guilt card on their children and we end up falling for it every time. You aren’t attending Sunday dinner? But it might be yiayia's last Sunday…
16.) The men in your family are thought of as gods.
Your older male cousin can do no wrong in your grandmothers' eyes and they get babied more than anyone.
17.) Your family may come across as crazy sometimes to an outsider.
But it’s only because Greeks and Italians are passionate people. We fight big and we love big. You wouldn’t change one crazy second.
18.) Both sides try to convince you that they're the better culture.
But you know they're both pretty great.
19.) You are equally proud of both sides of your heritage.
There is no better mix than Greek and Italian and you wouldn’t want to be anything else!
