Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff and happy new year to you. This is Short Stuff with the

Happy New Year edition. That's right. I believe this is coming out on New Year's Day. So I guess,

I mean, that's still Happy New Year. Yeah. Happy 2025 to you, Chuck.

Yeah, and to you.

And to Jerry.

Yeah.

So it's appropriate that we are talking about watch night tonight because it is a longstanding

tradition in the African American community, specifically the African American

Methodist community, that every New Year's Eve, they typically

hold a service starting maybe around 7 p.m., maybe 10 p.m., and that it traditionally ends just

after midnight, after the new year.

And the reason that it's so deeply rooted in the African-American

community in the United States is because there was the, what's considered the first

watch night in this tradition came on December 31st, 1862. And the next day, Abraham Lincoln's

executive order known as the Emancipation Proclamation would come into effect.

That's right.

At the stroke of midnight, bringing in that new year was a very special time, obviously, in America.

And it was called Freedom Eve for that reason as well.

But also watch night because you're, you know,

you're watching that clock ticking towards freedom. When they gathered on that first watch

night, there were a lot of churches who got together, obviously still legally enslaved people.

And they waited. It's a pretty amazing tradition. Beyond that, it celebrates

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