At one Feast of Tabernacles, a large group of people received a free bottle of some kind of alcoholic beverage…
At one Feast of Tabernacles in years past, a large group of people received a free bottle of some kind of alcoholic beverage (I think it was a type of brandy, if I remember it correctly). I received a bottle of it and was hoping to bring it home for those friends and relatives of mine who would appreciate such a gift, but the glass bottle was so fragile that it broke apart during the course of a night because some wire or book had knocked it over, and so for the rest of the feast the room and some of my personal belongings smelled of brandy. There are worse things, I suppose.
There are also many stories I have heard about people who were so embarrassed at their alcohol consumption during the Feast of Tabernacles (or the Feast of Booths) that they felt it necessary to hide the bottles lest the Feast of Booths be thought of as the Feast of Booze. From what I have heard (and I believe the accounts), the concern was serious enough to have been mentioned at church services as part of the announcements.
