These words refer to joyful gatherings of people. Celebration and party are both general, suggesting any coming together of a number of people to rejoice over some happy event. Celebrations and parties can be large or small, public or private, formal or informal; but celebration usually connotes a large gathering and party a more intimate group, often of persons who are close friends or at least acquainted: the candidate’s victory celebration that drew nearly a thousand people; He felt fortunate to be a guest at one of her small, select dinner parties. Ball implies an official or stately occasion, and suggests a scrupulously selected guest list and formal attire: the debutante’s coming-out ball; the Lord Mayor’s Ball.

Festival suggests the celebration of a whole community either periodically at a significant time of the year or on some important occasion: the town’s annual harvest festival . It is frequently applied to a planned series of cultural events: Sydney’s yearly Waratah Festival ; such lures for summer tourists as the Salzburg and Spoleto festivals . It is also used to describe annual religious ceremonies: the festival of Trinity Sunday. Feast , like festival , has a religious connotation: the feast of Palm Sunday. But in wider applications, it suggests a single celebration at which a great deal of food is eaten: all the knights and ladies gathering for a sumptuous feast . Outside a religious or historical context, the word may sound out-mode now, except in metaphorical or hyperbolically uses: That dinner you gave was a real feast . Banquet , in fact, has almost replaced feast in the sense of a formal or official dinner; it suggests the honouring of a special event or guest or the observing of an important occasion: After the wedding banquet , there will be a formal ball .

Festivity is vaguer in reference than most of these related words. It now might sound like inflated diction when it replaces festival or, especially, party : promising to look in later on the festivities . It is still viable, however, in suggesting a mood of convivial merry-making: the air of festivity that even the smallest town takes on during Christmas.