LIVONIA — If you grew up believing Santa Claus works only one night of the year, or perhaps just the month of December as he listens to the Christmas wishes of good boys and girls, the Rev. Joseph Marquis is here to dispel the myth.
Marquis, who has played the role of St. Nicholas for 53 years and even founded an institute in his name, has also been a priest for the past two decades – a 365-days a year job – and he’s a bit tired.
Father Christmas – er, Fr. Marquis, as he is known while leading parishioners at Sacred Heart Byzantine Catholic Church in Livonia. – will officially retire Aug. 1 from his day job.
“We’re retiring earlier now, priests,” Marquis, 76, said. “I am worn out. I don’t have the stamina anymore. In the Roman church, with staff you can get by. But when you do everything but bookkeeping, it gets overwhelming at this age.”
Byzantine Catholics share the same faith and sacraments as Roman Catholics, but expression of them in the Eastern tradition more closely follows Orthodox churches, according to Sacred Heart’s website.
Marquis’ path to priesthood did not follow a traditional route. He was a graphic designer who had already been married to his wife Mary for over a decade when he was ordained as a deacon by the Archdiocese of Detroit in 1986 and assigned to St. Donald Catholic Church in Roseville. His extensive resume also includes multiple other roles in the church, including serving as a hospital chaplain and directing pastoral care at Holy Cross Hospital in Detroit before it closed.
Marquis, who holds a bachelor’s degree in religious studies from Madonna University as well as a master’s in divinity and a doctorate of ministry, was 55 in 2006 when he was called to the priesthood by Bishop John Kudrick, who ordained him to lead Sacred Heart Byzantine Church that year.
“People say it’s a late vocation, but not really,” Marquis said. “According to God’s providence, it was right on schedule. My whole life is a testament to divine providence and thinking outside of the box, asking God for the next good step.”
He has no plans to retire from his role as Santa Claus.
Marquis can trace the start of his faith journey back to Christmas 1953, when he and his twin brother were just little boys asking the Hudson Santa Claus for a Lionel train that blew real smoke, as well as for their father, who was in the Maybury Sanatorium with tuberculosis, to get well.
Marquis recalled the jolly old elf was suddenly quiet before giving both boys a hug and telling them, “Santa is going to pray for you until your Dad comes home,” and giving each a wind-up Army tank.
A week later, Marquis remembered his pregnant mother crying in the kitchen. Without a source of income since her sick husband was unable to work at his job for Ford in Dearborn, the twins would not get a train. But on Christmas Day, their mother, who had gone into premature labor, safely delivered their baby brother. The family would wait another whole year, but in February 1955, Marquis’ father was finally released from the hospital.
Marquis never forgot that Hudson Santa. In his desire to be “one of Santa’s helpers,” taking children’s Christmas wishes and reporting back to the real Santa, he took the magic to a whole new level.
Marquis stepped into the big man’s boots in the 1970s, filling in for an ailing Rube Weiss in the Hudson’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and he has portrayed Santa and St. Nick ever since at malls, schools, churches, and even on screen—including a cameo in “Christmas Vacation.”
In 2011, Marquis was inducted into the Santa Claus Hall of Fame and the same year, he founded the St. Nicholas Institute, teaching others how to be Santa and St. Nick, and giving out awards to national and local figures.
Marquis has no plans to retire as Santa and will celebrate his 53rd year as St. Nick at the Detroit Athletic Club this December. He also plans to continue to venerate St. Nicholas as a docent of the 333 relics he has brought to Sacred Heart.
“This place was seismically different before I got here,” Marquis said, just a few days before giving his final liturgy on Father’s Day, looking around the church and the cabinets that line the walls, filled with bone fragments of various saints, as well as other relics collected over the past decade. “I didn’t expect something this big, it was supposed to be a veneration to St. Nicholas, Santa Claus.”
He will continue to lead tours of the All Saints Shrine for which visitors come by the busload, to see relics that Marquis calls “an encounter with greatness.”
Diane Kepich-Lawrence, a longtime member of Sacred Heart Byzantine, said she and other congregants, as well as the many believers in Santa, have been lucky to know Marquis.
“I am going to miss him,” Kepich-Lawrence said. “He’s truly made an impression on everybody. He is knowledgeable and knows the Bible and knows about God, our Lord and Savior. He’s a treasure.”
Contact reporter Susan Bromley at sbromley@hometownlife.com
This article originally appeared on Hometownlife.com: Santa is forever. But this Livonia priest, aka St. Nick, is retiring from his day job
Reporting by Susan Bromley, Hometownlife.com / Hometownlife.com
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