Life in St. Petersburg revolved around weddings, baptisms, christenings and funerals. Peter and the members of his family were always willing to appear as witnesses at a wedding, and he was frequently a godfather, often holding over the baptismal font the children of common soldiers, artisans, and lower-ranking officials. Peter did this cheerfully, but the family could not expect a lavish present; all that was given was a kiss for the mother and a rouble slipped under the baptismal pillow in the old Russian fashion. After the ceremony, if the weather was warm, Peter would take off his caftan and sit down in the first empty seat. When he served as Marshal of Ceremonies at a wedding, he fulfilled his duties rigorously, then put down his marshal's rod, moved to the table, took a hot roast of meat in his hands and began to eat.
Winter scarcely slowed Peter's incessant activity. On days when Jefferyes was writing to London that "one can hardly put one's nose out of doors without running the risk of losing it in the cold," Peter, Catherine and members of the court drove forty miles to the village of Dudderoff, where—reported the startled ambassador— they enjoyed "the diversion of what they call the catat, or the driving in sledges full speed down a steep mountain." Another winter sport, ice-boating, attracted the Tsar even more. "In winter when both the river Neva and . . . [the Gulf] are frozen over, then he has his boats . . . ingeniously fixed for sailing upon the ice," wrote Perry. "Every day when there is a gale of wind, he sails and plies to windward upon the ice, with Jack-Ensign and Pennant flying in the same manner as upon the water."
During the summer months, Peter delighted in opening the Summer Garden for receptions and celebrations. The anniversary of the Battle of Poltava on June 28 was always memorable: the Preobrazhensky Guards in their bottle-green uniforms and the Semyonovsky Guards in dark blue were massed in ranks in an adjacent field, and Peter himself handed wooden breakers of wine and beer to his soldiers to toast the victory. Catherine and then-daughters, Anne and Elizabeth, dressed in elegant gowns, with jewels and pearls in their hair, stood in the center of the garden receiving guests, surrounded by the court and by LeBlond's bubbling fountains and cascades. Nearby, like two stiff little wax dolls, stood Peter's two grandchildren, Peter and Natalya, the orphaned son and daughter of the Tsarevich Alexis. Having paid their respects, the guests sat down around wooden tables placed among the groves, none of them happier than the bearded bishops and other clergy devotedly drinking their fill.
On one of these occasions, gaiety turned to alarm, especially among the foreigners and some of the ladies, when they observed six brawny Guardsmen advancing toward them carrying huge buckets of corn brandy to be consumed in serious toasting. Guards having been posted at all the gates to prevent anyone from leaving, a stampede began in the direction of the river, where several galleys had been moored. The bishops, however, made no attempt to flee, but sat at their tables, smelling of radishes and onions, their faces wreathed in smiles, drinking toast after toast. Later, the Tsaritsa and the Princesses led the company in dancing on the decks of the galleys, and fireworks lit up the sky over the river. Some continued dancing and drinking into morning, but many simply sank down where they were in the garden and drifted into sleep.
Members of the imperial family as well as those who had faithfully served the Emperor were buried with pomp. A number of Peter's older lieutenants had fallen. Romodanovsky died in 1717, and his offices passed to his son. Sheremetve followed in 1719 at sixty-seven, a few years after marrying a cultured young widow who had lived in England. Jacob Dolgoruky died in 1720 at eighty-one. To old and loyal foreigners who had spent many years—in some cases, most of their adult lives—in his service, Peter responded with special generosity. While still in service, they received estates; when they retired, they received pensions, which were continued for their widows or orphaned children. Nor would Peter permit the reduction of an official's income when he went into retirement. When one aging foreigner retired after thirty years' service, the College of Financial Control proposed a pension equal to half his salary. Peter was distressed. "What?" he asked. "Shall a man who has spent his youth in my service be exposed to poverty in his old age? No, give him the whole of his pay as long as he lives, without requiring anything from him, since he is unable to serve. But take his advice in whatever relates to his profession and profit from his experience. Who would sacrifice the most valuable years of his life if he knew that he was doomed to poverty in his old age and that he to whom his youth was devoted would neglect him when he was worn out?"
For a man as impatient and charged with energy as Peter, relaxation was difficult. "What do you do at home?" he once asked those around him. "I don't know how to stay at home with nothing to do." He eschewed the favorite sport of many monarchs by refusing to hunt. Although his father had spent every free moment hunting with falcons, and the royalty of France reveled in the pursuit of stags through forests, Peter disliked such sports. "Hunt, gentlemen," he said one day in reply to an invitation to join a hunting party near Moscow, "hunt as much as you please, and make war on wild beasts. For my part, I cannot amuse myself that way while I have enemies to encounter abroad and constant and refractory subjects to deal with at home." Peter's favorite game was chess and, so that he could play at any time or place with anyone, he carried with him a folding leather chessboard with black and white squares. He did not object to gambling and played a Dutch card game for money, but mainly to enjoy the comradeship and conversation of the sea captains and shipbuilders who were his fellow players. Among his soldiers or the sailors of his fleet, he made a strict rule: No man's loss could amount to more than a rouble. As Peter saw it, serious gamblers had no taste for anything really useful and thought of nothing but devising ways of fleecing each other.
Peter relaxed best when he was working with his hands: wielding a hatchet at the" Admiralty shipyard, bent over his lathe turning objects in wood or ivory, or hammering out iron bars next to a forge. The Emperor enjoyed visiting iron foundries—he liked the pumping of the bellows, the glowing of the metal in the fires, the clang of hammers on the anvils—and he had learned the basic skills of the blacksmith's trade. Once he spent a month working in the forges of a master blacksmith named Werner Muller. Peter worked hard, forging 720 pounds of iron bars in a single day, and when he asked for his pay, Muller lavishly overpaid him. Peter refused the excess, accepting only the wage of an average smith, then taking the sum to a shop where he bought a pair of shoes. Afterward, he showed his new shoes proudly to everyone saying, "I have earned them by the sweat of my brow with a hammer and an anvil."
As always, Peter's greatest pleasure was to be on the water. Even when he was ashore, he had a standing arrangement that upon the firing of three cannon shots from the Peter and Paul Fortress, all ships in the river between the fortress and the Winter Palace were obliged to exercise their crews by running up sails, hoisting anchors and tacking to and fro. The Tsar, standing at a window of the Winter Palace, observed all this activity with a keen eye and much pleasure. In summer, he spent as much time as possible on board a boat or ship. He relished general boating excursions on the Neva, which he announced by having special flags hung at street intersections throughout the city. On the appointed day, all citizens who owned boats assembled on the river in front of the fortress. On Peter's signal, the flotilla set off downstream with the Tsar in the van, standing at the tiller of his own boat. Many of the noblemen brought musicians, and the peals of trumpets and oboes sounded across the water. Near the mouth of the river, boats usually turned into a small canal which led to Catherine's little country palace, Ekaterinhof. Here, the guests moved to tables placed under the orchard trees and quenched their thirst drinking glasses of Tokay wine.