Watch Night, also called Freedom's Eve, Christian religious service held on New Year's Eve and associated, in many African American churches, with a celebration and remembrance of the Emancipation Proclamation (enacted January 1, 1863), which freed slaves in the Confederate states during the American Civil War. Many mainline Protestant churches in the United States sponsor a Watch Night service on New Year's Eve.

The tradition of Watch Night may be traced to the early 18th century in Moravian churches, when churchgoers began marking the occasion with a vigil to reflect upon the year past an...