by Robert Zachary –
When I was a boy growing up in Anniston, Alabama, the first day of the year was a very sacred and special day.
As far back as I can remember, I heard stories and sensed excitement about the coming Watch Night.
During my boyhood, my mother was a member of this little Pentecostal Holiness Church right up above our house. She would take me and my sisters to church for the Watch Night service, which would start at around 9 p.m. and end close to the stroke of midnight. They had singing, praying, testimonies, a New Year’s resolution service, communion, and washing of feet. It was a grand affair, especially for us children. But I did not understand the true meaning until years later.
When I was around ten or eleven, somebody discovered my singing voice, and I was ushered into a new (for me) arena of singing at different churches. Now, I had no idea what Watch Night was really about. But fortunately, my aunt Verna Mae (along with my sister Mary) was an organist. In fact, she was among the first Black organists in Anniston who were asked to play noon-time hymns on the famous pipe organ at the all-white Grace Episcopal Church downtown.
One year, my aunt and my sister arranged for me to sing at the Emancipation Day service at Gaines Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church. The service was held on New Year’s Day at 12 o’clock noon, and the place was nearly full. And after that first year, until I went off to college, it remained my esteemed responsibility every New Year’s Day to sing on Emancipation Day at some church in my city.
Over the years of attending these Emancipation Day Services, I began to put together the real meaning of both Watch Night and Emancipation Services and how they embodied the same meaning. The only difference, to let my aunt Verna Mac explain it, was that “Holy Rollers mostly have Watch Night and our more sophisticated Black churches have Emancipation service.”
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