At many multiracial and predominantly Black churches in America, a different sort of New Year’s was celebrated. Watch Night marks what to many in the Black American community must have felt was the longest night in their lives—the night of December 31, 1862. The previous September, President Lincoln had issued Proclamation 95, better known as the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all slaves in states engaged in rebellion against the United States. The order was to take effect on January 1, 1863: New Year’s.
The night of December 31, Black Americans, free and enslaved, gathered, some in churches, others in dark places away from their masters, literally on watch for the clock to strike 12, signaling freedom.
“At the time, enslaved Black people could find little respite from ever-present surveillance, even in practicing their faith,” explains the National Museum of African American History and Culture. “White enslavers feared that religion, which was often used to quell slave resistance, could incite the exact opposite if practiced without observance.”
To this day, New Year’s Eve is observed by many congregations as Watch Night.
The museum describes a typical Watch Night in church:
“Many congregants across the nation bow in prayer minutes before the midnight hour as they sing out “Watchman, watchman, please tell me the hour of the night.’ In return the minister replies “It is three minutes to midnight’; ‘it is one minute before the new year’; and ‘it is now midnight, freedom has come.’”
A Watch Night worship service is followed by a New Year’s Day meal, often featuring a dish called Hoppin’ John.
“Traditionally, Hoppin’ John consists of black-eyed peas, rice, red peppers, and salt pork, and it is believed to bring good fortune to those who eat it,” the museum says. “Some other common dishes include candied yams, cornbread, potato salad, and macaroni and cheese.”
With the advent of high tech and the interruption of the pandemic, many Watch Night services went virtual with no in-person attendance requirement. Among the churches that observed Watch Night via Zoom and other platforms were Beulah Baptist Church in Philadelphia and First Congregational Church in Atlanta.
But many more—such as Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist; Reid Temple AME Church in Glenn Dale, Maryland; and Shiloh Baptist Church in Trenton, New Jersey preferred to do it live.
In Salem, North Carolina, the Rev. William Barber II, a prominent antipoverty and social justice activist, led an interfaith Watch Night service at Union Baptist Church along with its senior pastor, Sir Walter Mack. The night’s theme: a “service of lament, hope and call to action.”
After 160 years of the equality they thought they had long since won, to 21st-century African Americans, Watch Night also signifies continued struggles.
In a 2021 opinion piece about Watch Night in The New York Times, Esau McCaulley, associate professor of New Testament at Wheaton College, wrote, “Watch Night argues that God has answered our prayers for liberation both spiritual and material. To the cynic who asks what has God done for Black people, we reply on Watch Night: He has freed the slaves and changed our lives.”
He quoted Fredrick Douglass, who said “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.”
McCaulley believes “Each generation of Black folks has taken up this watch keeping, guided by a moral compass that transcends the limited imagination of the powerful.”
“There are a number of New Year’s resolutions on the horizon. I am sure we will fail at most of them. But I hope that we do not fail to take up the responsibilities handed to us by our ancestors. We must ... take up the watch so that the coming generation might inherit a more free and just society.
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