Nor did he appreciate the popular pastime of dancing: "I never knew a dancer good for anything else." In the mid-1750s the young Boston lawyer John Adams found such dalliances disconcerting but inevitable: "Let others waste their bloom of life at the card or billiards table among rakes and fools," he grumbled. By the eve of the Revolution, New Englanders regularly participated in dancing and parlor games, challenging traditional Puritan values. Girls were generally cautioned against vigorous exercise after reaching puberty and encouraged to prepare for early marriage by playing with dolls and learning from their mothers the skills of housekeeping and cooking.
Summer pastime, as was ice skating in winter. Young males also played a ball and stick game of "rounders," the precursor to baseball, and "foot-ball," which was somewhat akin to modern soccer and rugby. Children were encouraged to engage in vigorous activities, especially hunting and fishing for the boys. Nonetheless, the erosion of theocratic control meant that New Englanders increasingly enjoyed their dancing, cards, and dice, even an occasional horse race. Such prohibitions grew out of the essential work ethic of Calvinism: games might provide amusement, but they detracted from the labor that had to be accomplished in field and shop. To their credit the Puritans in Massachusetts and Connecticut had sought, with varying degrees of success, to outlaw "butcherly sports" like cockfighting and animal baiting, although it has been said that they banned them not so much because of the sufferings of animals but the pleasure the practice gave spectators. Interest in sports grew with rising income levels and a growing colonial economy that made leisure activities more attractive. Attempts to enforce seventeenth-century laws prohibiting popular leisure activities had long since ended. As the colonies developed stable economic and social foundations, however, such prohibitions broke down and colonists of all classes engaged in a wide range of games and amusements.īy the mid-1700s distinctive regional patterns for individual and organized sport had taken root. Massachusetts Bay Colony and Jamestown, leaders felt compelled to "suffer no Idle persons" and to adopt laws "in detestation of idleness." During the early decades of settlement, strict proscriptions against dancing, bowling, dice and cards, and the playing of games of ball were imposed, although enforcement was sporadic. The settlers who came to North America brought with them the love of games and amusements that characterized "Merrie Olde England," but recreation had to give way to the creation of a new society in an intimidating and dangerous environment. By 1750 sport and recreation had become an important part of everyday life in colonial America.
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