The St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church will be celebrating the new year with a Cross Over service on Wednesday night.

The service will run from 10 p.m. to midnight, and will be held at the church located at 1000 Des Moines St., Webster City.

Although specifically Catholic rites will be a feature of the evening, including exposition and benediction of the blessed sacrament, the Rev. Francis Kwane Anane, of St. Thomas Aquinas, stresses there will be elements familiar to all Christians, including prayer, singing, and penance.

Cross Over celebrations are a New Year’s Eve tradition in churches across Africa. They’re especially prominent in charismatic churches, where they can rival Christmas, some concluding in elaborate fireworks displays. The tradition of holding prayer-centered services on New Years Eve, has spread to Europe, Britain and North America in recent years. Father Anane sees it as a time of unity, in which everyone can come together to thank God for blessings in 2025, and look forward in faith and hope, to a blessed 2026.

Music will, once more, figure prominently in this year’s Cross Over. Father Anane has invited Father Daniel Aboagye, Chaplain, St. Catherine of Sienna parish and Drake Student Centre, Des Moines, and Father John Owusu Agyemang, Parochial Vicar, St. Pius X parish, Des Moines, to provide music for 15 songs of praise and thanksgiving for the program.

Following the service, a midnight luncheon buffet, a symbolic “first breaking of bread in the new year,” will be served in the church foyer. The menu includes pizza, homemade, spicy cheese dip with corn chips, meat and cheese picks, fresh fruit salad, trail mix, cookies, almond and pecan pastry, sparkling juice and water. No alcohol will be served.