Vacht Nacht
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A 'Vacht Nacht' (Yiddish; "the night of watching") is the night before the Bris milah. The standard "Vacht Nacht" custom, practiced by many Ashkenazic Jews, is to have children come and recite the Shema and other verses near the baby.
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As described in Edut L'Yisrael: Sheiruta D'Tzilota (a text on customs surrounding weddings and births in Judaism, printed in Israel c. 1960), the current practice appears to be a combination of two distinct customs.
Firstly, as stressed in the Kabbalistic sources, the night before the circumcision is considered a spiritually dangerous time for the baby; as such, the father would stay up and recite Shema or study Torah to protect him from metaphysical damage. Thus, this night is given the Yiddish name, "night of watching [or 'guarding']."
Secondly, non-Kabbalistic sources describe a practice several centuries old that on the Friday night before the Bris milah, a melamed would take his preschool-age students to say Shema with the baby, and afterwards receive candy (or their equivalent at that point in history, namely nuts and dried fruit.) This appears to be more for the sake of the children's education than for the baby.
Lastly, in many Sephardic communities, a ceremony known as a Brit Yitzchak exists the night before the circumcision; it primarily consists of inviting friends for food and thus closely parallels the Ashkenazic Shalom Zachor.
