Celebrating My Ancestors As We Enter 2023

In January 2021, I wanted to write a powerful piece that would encourage the Queens as we entered the "new year". I did not expect to learn all that I had by doing simple research on the history of New Year's Eve. What I learned was both sad and enlightening causing me to have a new take on the new year. After contemplation, I decided to share the hidden truths about what the new year meant to our ancestors.

Whether you use this information to help determine if and how you continue to celebrate New Year’s Eve in the future, this is a quick lesson that we all should have learned.

In 2019, Time.com posted an article called, The Slaves Dread New Year’s Eve Day the Worst’: The Grim History of January 1. In this article, the author explained the sad, angering truth that New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day were not always a time to celebrate the new year, fresh starts, and resolutions. Instead, before the Civil War, January 1st was a scary, sad time for people of African descent. Better known as Hiring Day or Heartbreak Day, enslaved people waited around wondering if they would be rented or sold to other “slave masters”, and even worse, they anticipated the separation of their families.

​“Hiring Day” was a time when most debts were collected and settled on New Year’s Day. They took place amongst families, friends, and business contracts, and were traded in town squares, on courthouse steps, and even on the side of the road. Those who were contracted out to other “slave owners” were to be removed from their “homes” and required to start a year-long term of enslavement under their new, temporary master. Memoirs and records left by those who were eventually free as well as those who “owned slaves” were found. The stories were said to be inhumane!

Ever heard of the saying, what you do on New Year’s Day is what you will be doing for the rest of the year??? Well, there you have it…coined by our ancestors based on their experiences.

​​At some point, on New Year’s Day, in 1808, the federal ban on the transatlantic slave trade went into effect. Unfortunately, this was not the end all be all of this practice. Different “slave trade abolition commemorations took place between 1808 and 1831”, meaning White people continued to do exactly what they wanted, including attacking African Americans and vandalizing their churches.

It wasn’t until 1863, that Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing enslaved people on New Year’s Day. Those who were enslaved went to church on December 31, 1862, which is where they remained until the following day, erecting what is now known as “Watch Night” services, still celebrated today.

My Queens, it is up to us, the leaders of the African American/Caribbean communities to share these stories. Not to continue to be saddened by the disturbing, disgusting transgressions of those who enslaved our people, but to encourage one another, to remind all of us of the lives that our ancestors lived and suffered before us. We have absolutely NO excuse nor reason to not be successful in every area of our lives. We have absolutely NO excuse nor reason to not love and support our friends, families, and communities in any way necessary. We have absolutely NO excuse nor reason to be lazy, dishonest, hurtful, hateful, or performing disgraceful acts. We have absolutely NO excuse nor reason not to educate and guide our children into the kingdom of perfection as a people, to increase opportunities for all by way of building OUR economy from within, building our communities from within. There is absolutely, emphatically, NO excuse nor reason why we, as the Queens of our kingdoms, are not working TOGETHER to reconnect, rebuild, and ‘reach back to knowledge gained in the past, bringing it into the present’ for the sake of our heritage (SANKOFA)! 

Thank you, ancestors, and happy freedom!

Queendom Rising!