Celebrations around the world
Watch Night
African American churches and the Methodist tradition, United States · December 31
Watch Night is a vigil that gathers the church to pray through the last hours of the old year into the new. In many Black churches it also remembers Freedom's Eve of 1862, when the enslaved kept watch for the Emancipation Proclamation to take effect at midnight.
How it is celebrated
The congregation gathers late on New Year's Eve for singing, testimony, Scripture, and prayer, crossing into the new year on their knees in thanksgiving.
In the Word
It is of the LORD’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.Lamentations 3:22 (KJV)
One family, in every land
Across the world the church keeps this feast in a thousand ways, but it is one Lord all of it honors. Wherever you are, pray, read the Word, and gather with the family of God on The Living Bread. Free, with no ads, for all people.
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