FEAST, N. A Festival. A Religious Celebration Usually Signalized By
Gluttony And Drunkenness, Frequently In Honor Of Some Holy Person
Distinguished For Abstemiousness.
FEAST, n. A festival. A religious celebration usually signalized by
gluttony and drunkenness, frequently in honor of some holy person
distinguished for abstemiousness. In the Roman Catholic Church
feasts are "movable" and "immovable," but the celebrants are uniformly
immovable until they are full. In their earliest development these
entertainments took the form of feasts for the dead; such were held by
the Greeks, under the name _Nemeseia_, by the Aztecs and Peruvians,
as in modern times they are popular with the Chinese; though it is
believed that the ancient dead, like the modern, were light eaters.
Among the many feasts of the Romans was the _Novemdiale_, which was
held, according to Livy, whenever stones fell from heaven.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
FREEMASONS, n. An order with secret rites, grotesque ceremonies and
fantastic costume which, originating in the reign of Charles II,
among working artisans of London, has been joined successively by the
dead of past centuries in unbroken retrogression until now it embraces
all the generations of man on the hither side of Adam and is drumming
up distinguished recruits among the pre-Creational inhabitants of
Chaos and Formless Void....
