The Slice: Sometimes you just have to believe in each other

It’s an unspoken reality at many family gatherings on Easter.

Some believe the story that is the religious underpinning of this particular Sunday. Some don’t. Each family deals with this schism in its own way.

Here are 10 approaches. Do you see your family in any of these?

1. The person saying grace keeps it short.

2. Lots of talk about the ham, the weather and how nice everyone looks. No references to the origins of Christianity.

3. Non-believers (heathens) hectored with the verbal equivalent of fire and brimstone.

4. Religious family members are mocked and goaded with torrents of abusive blasphemy.

5. Everyone gets along, despite profound doctrinal differences, because all present love one another.

6. When a child asks, “Well, what do we believe?” your brother responds with such tact that you are forced to reconsider your opinion that he is a hopeless idiot.

7. Nobody brings up the movie, “Spotlight.” Not after last Easter.

8. Your family models such exemplary acceptance when it comes to faith issues that you find yourself wishing everyone could be like your relatives. Then someone mentions Donald Trump and you remember why that might not be a great idea.

9. Most of the conversation is about family members who have passed away. And everyone is on the same page when it comes to Aunt Mary.

10. Nobody refers to there being “a war on Easter.”

Slice answer: “I helped for many years with a fraternal organization’s Easter egg hunts,” wrote Bruce Au. “All of the hockey penalties you mentioned were abundantly displayed.”

Bruce likened the annual event to a devouring swarm of locusts.

Though, to be fair, I don’t think devouring was one of the two-minute infractions I mentioned.

Negative numbers: “I consider myself the Easter Bunny of golf,” wrote Glenn Williams. “I leave balls all along the courses I play for others to find later.”

Here’s his story. “In a WSU tournament to support the athletic department a number of years ago, on a hole designated with a prize for both longest and shortest drives, I hit a tree so close to the tee that the ball bounced backward and landed behind the tee box. I was the clear winner.”

Today’s Slice question: Is this the No. 1 day on the calendar in Spokane when it comes to certain older residents reveling in complaining about the way young people dress nowadays?

Write The Slice at P. O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; email pault@spokesman.com. If conversation lags, you can always start a lively debate about how Jesus actually would have looked.