French Catholic Winter Holidays in Colonial Ste. Genevieve

The winter season today in Ste. Genevieve National Historical Park features lots of greenery decorating the houses.

NPS Image

How do you celebrate the holidays?

In colonial Ste. Genevieve the year was shaped around the religious celebrations and rituals that the majority French Catholic population observed. The most festive period in the year came in the winter months. The period from December to mid-January was packed with festivities that ended and started the resident's year through several connected celebrations.

Advent and Christmas Eve

The festive season in Ste. Genevieve began with the period of Advent, which starts four weeks prior to Christmas. Advent was a time of reflection, fasting, and celebration for the town's French Catholic residents. The four weeks of Advent were marked by numerous Saint’s Day celebrations that led to December being the least common month for events like marriages within the town. The culmination of Advent and one of the biggest celebrations for the French Catholics of Ste. Genevieve was Christmas Eve.

"The Midnight Mass," by Félix Hilaire Buhot shows the tradition of midnight mass continuing in Catholic communities in 1887.

Cleveland Museum of Art

Christmas Eve celebrations started with a midnight mass that most of the community attended. Henry Marie Brackenridge, a Protestant American boy that stayed with Vital Beauvais’ family in Ste. Genevieve during the early 1800s wrote of attending a midnight mass. Brackenridge described his experience in the lead up to mass,

“At Christmas eve it was the custom to keep the church open all night, and at midnight to say mass. On this occasion, I found myself alone for nearly an hour before that time, seated on a high chair or stool, with a cross in my hand, in front of the altar, which was splendidly decorated, and lighted with the largest wax candles the village could afford.”

After the church service ended, the residents gathered with their extended families for a feast. The feast, called La Réveillon, was a breakfast feast that would start in the hours following mass and proceed into the next day. La Réveillon featured traditional breakfast foods such as eggs, sausage, and breads along with non-traditional breakfast items like puddings, stews, and cakes. The Christmas Day celebration would continue through the day with more feasting, mass services, and in some households, balls or parties to celebrate.

New Years and Epiphany

With the turn of the New Year the next celebration of the festive season arrived, La Guiannée. La Guiannée occurred on New Year’s Eve and worked to prepare the town for the final winter festivity, Epiphany. On the evening of December 31st, a singing group of men would come together dressed in costume, ready to travel door-to-door through the community. As the troupe went through town they would sing and seek donations from each household for the Epiphany feast. The group collected things like lard, poultry, eggs, wheat, and candles to feed the community and decorate for the Epiphany Celebration.

The Kings Ball featured finely dressed participants like those seen in this sketch of the "Bal de la Courtille" from 1820.

Library of Congress

With the arrival and departure of La Guiannée the town shifted to preparing for the final winter celebration, Epiphany. Epiphany marked the arrival of the three wise men or “kings” to the baby Jesus and was celebrated with mass followed by a feast and ball. The feast featured the goods collected just a few days prior by the singing troupe of La Guiannée. Following the feast, the community came together to transition from the winter festivities to the spring celebrations. This transition occurred with a ball, named the Kings Ball, which was held night of January 6th or in the days immediately following. On the day of Epiphany during the feast the unmarried women of town would come together to select the hosts of ball or “Kings”. Those “Kings” started a cycle of balls that led the community from Epiphany to Ash Wednesday and the start of Lent.

The cycle of festivities that made up the holiday traditions for the French Catholic residents of Ste. Geneveve ebbed and flowed and changed as the town changed. With new arrivals of American and German backgrounds, new traditions emerged, and old traditions adapted to suit the growing community. The changes have allowed for many of the French Catholic traditions to continue into the present-day community.

Further Reading:

Belting, Natalie. Kaskaskia Under the French Regime. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1948.

Brakenridge, Henry Marie. Recollections of Persons and Places in the West. Philadelphia: J.P. Lippincott, 1868.

Ekberg, Carl. Colonial Ste. Genevieve: an Adventure on the Mississippi Frontier. Gerald, Mo.: Patrice Press, 1985.

Reynolds, John. The Pioneer History of Illinois. Bellville, Ill.: N.A. Randall, 1852.