Hello Lovelies,

We find ourselves at Christmas time already. This season is so full of celebrations and festivals that honor the light and that celebrate our connection to each other. It's amazing to read about how cultures all over the world have celebrated this time historically and still today. One celebration that I'm just learning about is Watch Night, also called Freedom's Eve. It is celebrated on Dec. 31st as a way of commemorating the night when black people throughout the South waited to hear if Lincoln would sign the Emancipation Proclamation. It continues to be celebration of the end of slavery, as well as a spiritual practice in the African Methodist Episcopal church and elsewhere of bringing in faith and blessings for a new year. Learning more about this time of waiting for freedom helps support our Eighth Principle: “journeying toward spiritual wholeness by working to build a diverse multicultural Beloved Community by our actions that accountably dismantle racism and other oppressions in ourselves and our institutions.”

Watch Night explained with pictures of the original Emancipation Proclamation document