Posted Nov 20, 2011 by Default Admin User
Tags: traditions, offsite

"Watch Night," according to bartleby.com, can properly refer either to New Year's Eve or to a religious service held on New Year's Eve. Under either usage, it is likely a term unfamiliar to most, in that the observance of "watch nights" among Christians has devolved into primarily an African-American practice.

Watch Night is celebrated among that community by congregants' gathering at their churches on the last evening of the year to attend special services that typically commence between 7 and 10 p.m. and continue through midnight and into the New Year. These services are regarded by participants as a time to reflect upon and give thanks for the departing year and pray for the future, a spiritual way of celebrating a largely secular holiday. Many churches embrace them as an alternative to the rowdy partying and drinking often associated with New Year's Eve.

Yet as strongly as Watch Night is now linked to the black community, its observance did not originate with that group, nor did it begin on 31 December 1862, the night before the Emancipation Proclamation came into effect.

Watch Night began with the Moravians, a small Christian denomination whose roots lie in what is the present-day Czech Republic. The first such service is believed to have been held in 1733 on the estates of Count Nicholas von Zinzendorf in Hernhut, Germany.

John Wesley, founder of the Methodist movement, picked it up from the Moravians, incorporating a Watch Night vigil into the practices of his denomination. Methodist Watch Nights were held once a month and on full moons, with the first such service in the United States taking place in 1770 at Old St. George's Church in Philadelphia. These services survive to the present day in that denomination's worship manuals as "Covenant Renewal Services."

As to what was being "watched over" in those earlier services, it was one's covenant with God. These gatherings were a time for congregants to meditate on their state of grace — were they spiritually ready to meet their maker if the call were suddenly to come? As the 13th chapter of Mark instructs, the faithful need to be ever vigilant, because the hour of the Lord's coming is not known. (Watch ye therefore: for ye know not when the master of the house cometh.)

The end-of-year Watch Night of 1862 took on special significance attaching to the impending 1 January 1863 enactment of the Emancipation Proclamation, and that night has come to be known as "Freedom's Eve." On 22 September 1862, President Lincoln issued his Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which stated: "[O]n the first day of January ... all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free." Lincoln subsequently issued the Emancipation Proclamation itself on 1 January 1863.

While that proclamation did not end slavery the moment it was issued, it did at least proclaim some slaves free. Knowing that this was going into effect the next day must certainly have influenced the nature of that year's Watch Night within the African-American and abolitionist communities, adding a second layer of what was being watched for (the coming of freedom at the stroke of midnight) to the more usual fare (the coming of the Christ at an unspecified future date and therefore the need to maintain a constant personal state of spiritual preparation). Among African-American congregations, that second layer of meaning has since become permanently woven into the fabric of the original, making New Year's Eve Watch Night services as much now about remembering the end of slavery as it is upon personal reflection on the state of one's soul.

Barbara Mikkelson
26 December 2008
www.snopes.com

Sources:

    Hogan-Albach, Susan.   "Watch Night."
        [Minneapolis] Star Tribune.   27 December 1997   (p. B5).

    Johnson, Jean.   "Watching and Waiting for Profound New Year's Eve."
        St. Petersburg Times.   5 January 2002   (Religion, p. 3).

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