Lost Conviviality

The English Freemasonry of the 18th Century was fundamentally a convivial society. Men of quality met in the local tavern to feast and toast in fellowship. Good food, ale, wine and port were essential accompaniments to the Masonic meeting. There were seven formal toasts, often followed by traditional Masonic songs. In short, lodge meetings were joyful, celebratory occasions!

Today, most lodge meals are dull, tasteless, and dry affairs. Mediocre buffets and spaghetti dinners with soda pop and coffee. No toasts; no songs; no joy.

A century ago, religious American Masons supporting the temperance movement strongly advocated prohibition for both Freemasonry and the country as a whole (and in one act violated both of our most basic taboos by bringing sectarian religion and divisive politics into the lodge room). While the country repealed prohibition in 1933, the Grand Lodge of Ohio still prohibits alcohol in Masonic buildings. We may be good men and true, but our Grand Lodge does not believe us responsible enough to raise a glass a wine in a toast to the Craft! And so our lodges became bastions of coffee drinking, cigarette smoking old men eating bad food. And still our "grand" leaders wonder why we cannot attract young men to our lodges today.