Festivities of the Early French of Illinois. Hand colored wood engraving from the
Historical Collections of the Great West, by Henry Howe, 1854, p.89.
Courtesy Missouri Historical Society


Information on Festivities in Colonial St. Louis:

The people of St. Louis loved feasts and festivals. Every month of the year had at least one, and even Sundays were days of merriment. Capt. Amos Stoddard of the U.S. Army observed in 1804 that:

"Perhaps the levities displayed and the amusements pursued by the French people on Sunday may be considered by some to border on Licentiousness. They attend mass in the morning with great devotion; but after the exercises of the church are over, they usually collect in parties and pass away their time in social and merry intercourse. They play at billiards and other games, and to balls and assemblies the Sundays are particularly devoted. To those educated in regular and pious Protestant habits such parties and amusements appear unreasonable, strange and odious. . . When questioned relative to their gaiety on Sundays, they will answer that men were made for happiness, and that the more they are able to enjoy themselves the more acceptable they are to their creator."

Amusements included horse racing, although there was no official track. There were two billiard rooms in St. Louis as early as 1767, and a third was opened later. Dancing and card-playing were also popular. Another day of celebration was the annual Catholic feast day of St. Louis (the saint, not the city), on August 25. Christmas and New Years were also special holidays in early St. Louis.