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For the very last night and half a day, the negotiators haggled over the last catch quotas in the Commission headquarters in Brussels.
Then the deed was done: the European Union and the United Kingdom agreed on one of the largest and most extensive free trade deals in the world.
The contract, which is worth 730 billion euros annually, is much more than an economic agreement.
It marks the definitive end of an era of almost 48 years of British membership in the EU.
The paths are parting, and the future will show whether the seafaring nation will actually find happiness, as Boris Johnson and his Brexiteers wish.
Whether the kingdom will master the challenges of the 21st century more dynamically and successfully, independently of Brussels.
Ursula von der Leyen doubts it.
Shortly before the party, the EU Commission chief made it clear that the British were making a mistake with Brexit.
The German has a different understanding of the big words of national sovereignty that have been echoing the Europeans from London since the 2016 Brexit referendum.
Sovereignty, that is open borders and the opportunity to work, live, study and do business throughout the Union: "In a world of great powers to unite our strengths and speak with a common voice." No deal in the world could change the true weight distribution in the world, said von der Leyen.
“And we are one of the giants.” The United Kingdom, alone and outside the EU, is no longer, that is the message from Brussels when we leave.
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“What we call the beginning is often the end.
And to finish something means to begin something ”, quoted von der Leyen the poet TS Eliot.
The British Prime Minister recorded this ball when it went public in London shortly afterwards.
The deal gives new certainty not only to the economy, but also to the British-European relationship, which at times was anything but harmonious.
Unusually conciliatory, downright humble, was the man on Christmas Eve without whom Brexit 2016 probably would not have happened.
For Boris Johnson, the end of EU membership is a beginning in another way.
On the one hand, he will now have to deliver everything that he promised the British with the panacea Brexit.
The fact that he had to make compromises for the deal and that London cannot avoid Brussels even after leaving the EU is another.
Europe remains British fate.