Watch Night Service
There are no party favors, no paper whistles, no shiny hats for these New Year's celebrants. They won't be greeting the new year with a Champagne toast while the ball drops in Times Square.
It will be joyful, but clean, especially during those last 10 minutes when the preacher stops preaching, the choir quiets down and those who are so inclined, get down on their knees and pray.
It's called the Watch Night service, a Methodist custom that African Americans adopted and adapted as a spiritual and political ritual during the time of slavery. It continues today around the United States, with many remembering the most important Watch Night service, that of Dec. 31, 1862.
Skeptical that President Abraham Lincoln would keep his word about emancipation, African Americans, both free and slave, as well as abolitionists, prayed through the night and into the day. Abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass stayed at a church in Rochester, N.Y., until 10 p.m. on New Year's Day, awaiting a cable that assured him that the law had been passed.
"Our ancestors always believed that they would someday be free," said Lawrence VanHook, Laney College adjunct professor of ethnic studies and pastor ofCommunity Christian Church, "We believed in our prayer, our watching in anticipation of what God would do."
To borrow shamelessly from Dickens, this time of year was the best of times and the worst of times for slaves. Christmas was the best of times because it afforded good eating, less work and permission to visit distant relatives and friends. New Year's Day, also known as "Heartbreak Day," was the worst of times because slave families anticipated being split up as owners would balance their books by auctioning off slaves, as well as hogs and horses.
The institution of slavery first showed signs of cracking with the U.S. ban on slave importation as of 1808. The Civil War brought an official end to the practice with Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of Sept. 22, 1862, to be effective as of Jan. 1, 1863.
In 1862, "there was a lot of politicking and resistance," to Lincoln's plan to free the slaves, said the Rev. Amos Brown of San Francisco's Third Baptist Church. "The slaves decided they would gather and watch through the night for the expectation of the dawn of a new day."
The Jan. 1 Emancipation celebrations began to die out in the North and far West at the beginning of the 20th century, but the custom of Watch Night persists.
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