Watch Night

Heard in the wild

The longer version

What it means

Watch Night is church on New Year's Eve. The service begins late — nine or ten o'clock — and runs past midnight, with singing, prayer, testimonies of what God did in the past year, a sermon, and, as midnight approaches, the congregation kneeling to pray the new year in. When the clock strikes, there's celebration — "Happy New Year!" in the sanctuary — and then, in many churches, a meal: black-eyed peas, greens, cornbread, and whatever the kitchen has been cooking all evening.

In the Black church, Watch Night carries a second meaning that gives it its weight. On the last night of 1862, Black Americans gathered to watch for midnight and the moment the Emancipation Proclamation became law. Every Watch Night since remembers that one.

Why people say it

Christians hold Watch Night because the turning of the year is a natural time to take stock before God: to give thanks, to repent, to renew commitments, and to face the unknown year in prayer rather than at a party. Jesus told His followers to "keep watch." For the Black church, the night is also memory and testimony — freedom came at midnight, and God was in it. The service holds joy and solemnity together in a way few others do.

How to respond

If you're invited to a Watch Night service, go; it's one of the richest experiences in American Christianity, and visitors are warmly received. Expect to be there past midnight, to hear extraordinary music, to be asked (gently, optionally) to testify or pray, and to be fed. Dress a little nicely. If a friend says they'll be at Watch Night, they've told you how they spend New Year's Eve — and, if they're from a Black church, that they're keeping a 160-year-old tradition. Ask them about Freedom's Eve; they'll tell you.

If you hear it in different churches

Black churches of every denomination — Baptist, Methodist (AME, AME Zion, CME), Pentecostal (COGIC), and others — keep Watch Night as a major observance. United Methodists have a Covenant Renewal service on New Year's Eve or the first Sunday of January, from Wesley. Some Pentecostal and evangelical churches hold New Year's Eve prayer services. Catholics have a Mass for the Solemnity of Mary on January 1 and sometimes a vigil. Most other churches have nothing, which is their loss.

Where does “Watch Night” come from?

The Moravians at Herrnhut held the first recorded watch-night service on New Year's Eve 1733; John Wesley adopted the practice for the Methodists in 1740 and wrote a Covenant Renewal service for it. Black Americans, enslaved and free, gathered in churches and homes on December 31, 1862, to await the Emancipation Proclamation's effect at midnight — "Freedom's Eve" — and the tradition became permanent in the Black church, carried through Reconstruction, the Great Migration, and the civil rights era. Watch Night services have been held every New Year's Eve since, and in 2012 the 150th anniversary was marked in churches nationwide.

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