Nobody told me about the Festive Board. My proposer mentioned “dinner after the meeting” and I pictured, I don’t know, a curry. Maybe a nice pub. What I got was a three-course meal with more rules than the ceremony I’d just survived, and I loved every bewildering second of it.
The Songs
First thing that hit me: the singing. Everyone around the table launched into a song I’d never heard in my life. Mouths open, voices raised, absolute confidence. I stood there like a man who’d wandered into the wrong concert. The brother next to me — a kindly Past Master — nudged a song sheet across. It was printed in a font so small I’d have needed the James Webb Telescope to read it.
I mouthed along. I mouthed along to everything that night. At one point I’m fairly sure I was mouthing the words to “Bohemian Rhapsody” and nobody noticed.
The Toasts
There are many toasts. So many toasts. Toasts to the King. Toasts to Grand Lodge. Toasts to the Provincial Grand Master. Toasts to the Worshipful Master. Toasts to the visitors. Toasts to the newly initiated — that’s me, looking startled. At some point I lost count and just started raising my glass whenever anyone else did.
The worst part? Some toasts you drink. Some you don’t. Some you sip. Some you drain. There’s a system to it, apparently, but as a brand-new Entered Apprentice I had about as much chance of cracking that code as I did of understanding the ceremony I’d just been through.
The Fire
Then came the fire. Not an actual fire — though at this point nothing would have surprised me. A Masonic fire. The whole table picked up their glasses, and in perfect unison performed this extraordinary choreographed routine of raising, lowering, tapping, and banging. It sounded like a platoon of soldiers presenting arms. Glasses hit the table in one thunderous crack.
I was approximately half a beat behind on every single movement. The brother opposite caught my eye and grinned. He’d been there once too.
The Raffle
I won the raffle. First Festive Board, first raffle, first prize. A bottle of Shiraz that I don’t drink and still haven’t opened. It sits on my kitchen shelf as a memento. The Secretary told me this was a good omen. The Junior Warden told me it meant I’d be buying the wine for next month. I’m still not sure who was joking.
“So What Made You Join?”
I counted. Fifteen brethren asked me this question over the course of the evening. Fifteen. Each one listened with genuine interest, as though mine was the first answer they’d ever heard. By the eighth time I’d polished my response into a tight thirty-second pitch. By the twelfth I was considering printing business cards.
But every single one of them meant it. That’s the thing about Freemasons at a Festive Board — they actually want to know.
The Senior Past Master
At the far end of the table sat a gentleman who’d been in the Craft for forty-seven years. He told me about his initiation night. It was a wonderful story — genuinely moving, full of detail, told with real warmth. He told me the same story again twenty minutes later. Then once more over coffee. Each time he added a small new detail, so I like to think of them as director’s cuts.
I hope someone listens to my stories three times when I’m forty-seven years in.
The Warmth
Here’s what nobody warns you about: somewhere between the fourth toast and the third telling of that story, it clicks. These men actually care. The Worshipful Master came over to shake my hand and ask if I was all right. A brother I’d never met offered me a lift home. The Secretary slipped me a printed schedule of the next six months of meetings — “so you don’t miss anything.”
I walked to my car at half eleven, slightly overfed, mildly confused about the fire, clutching a bottle of wine I’d never drink, and grinning like an idiot.
I get it now.