Celebrating Freedom and the New Year in Church

The last place that I wanted to be on Dec. 31 was church. But there I was on New Year's Eve, clustered next to a host of other Black teenagers in the back of the sanctuary for our Watch Night service. We were waiting to be freed to go to the clubs and house parties that had begun their festivities without us. Watch Night is a tradition in Black churches that began as a way to celebrate the Emancipation Proclamation. For my congregation in Huntsville, Ala., in the 1990s, that meant choirs from Black churches all over the city sang hymns and spirituals. A stream of pastors ascended the pulpit to deliver impassioned sermons. Their aim was to send the congregation into a frenzy of praise and thanksgiving that shook the wooden floors and the stone pillars of the sanctuary. They wanted us to end the year with a shout.