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The Feast
In the Eighteenth Century Lodges the Feast bulked so large in the life of the lodge that in many of them the members were seated at the table when the lodges were opened and remained at it throughout the Communication. The result was that Masonic fellowship was a good fellowship in it, as in a warm and fruitful soil, acquaintanceship, friendship, and affection could flourish--there was no grim and silent sitting on a bench, staring across at a wall. Out of this festal spirit flowered the love which Masons had for their lodge. They brought gifts to it and only by a reading of old inventories can any present day Mason measure the extent of that love; there were gifts of chairs, tables, altars, pedestals, draperies, silver, candle-sticks, oil paintings, libraries, Bibles, mementoes, curios, regalia, and portraits. The Lodge was a home, warm comfortable, luxurious, full of memories, and tokens, and affection. To such a Lodge no member went grudgingly, nor had to be coaxed, nor was moved by that ghastly, cold thing called a sense of duty, but went as if drawn by a magnet, and counted the days until he could go again.
It was an old puzzle to historians until a half century ago to explain how Freemasonry was able to grow, first in Britain and America and then around the world. The puzzle was solved when historical research began to discover for the first time how large had been the place of Feasts in early Lodges, and what their consequences were. The average early Lodge had only 8, 10, 15, or possibly 25 members-not enough to keep a modern American Lodge in existence-yet it flourished generation after generation, and it was those small Lodges which made Freemasonry great! It was because they loved their Lodges! And it so happens that Freemasonry is itself such that if in a Lodge of only ten members the ten wholeheartedly love it, then theirs is Masonically a larger and more powerful lodge than one of a hundred members in which they are nothing but members, and do nothing but attend it now and then. It is hard to love a Lodge if it meets in a half empty room, if its walls are bare, its furniture is ugly, if its color is drab, and if its Communications consist of nothing more than a routine turning over of lodge "business." Business indeed!
It was not called into existence in order to have minutes read! Even a mystic tie will snap under the strain of cheerlessness, repetition, monotony, and dullness. A Lodge needs a fire lighted in it, and the only way to have that warmth is to restore the Lodge Feast, because when it is restored good fellowship and brotherly love will follow, and where fellowship is, members will fill up an empty lodge room not only with themselves but also with their gifts.
-- H.L. Haywood; in his More About Masonry
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