God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen

The comma in the title is doing real work, and almost nobody prints it correctly. "God rest ye merry, gentlemen" is not an address to a group of cheerful men. "Rest you merry" was a set phrase in older English, a wish that someone stay in good spirits, so the "merry" belongs to "rest" and the comma belongs after it. Move the comma one word to the left, which carol sheets and shop-window displays do constantly, and the line quietly changes into something the writer never meant.

This is one of the oldest English carols still sung at full volume, catalogued as Roud 394, and it has been in circulation long enough to have collected several spellings, an extra verse or two depending on the hymnal, and a starring cameo in the most famous Christmas story in English.

Origins

The earliest known printed version is a broadsheet dated to around 1760. The first reference that can be dated exactly comes a few years later, in the Monthly Review of November 1764, which mentions the carol in passing and so proves it was already familiar to readers rather than new.

Older still is a manuscript from the early 1650s, anonymous, containing a version that opens "Sit yow merry gentlemen". The wording differs but the shape is recognisable, which pushes the song's ancestry back to the middle of the seventeenth century at the latest. Carols like this circulated by singing and by cheap printed sheets long before anyone thought to preserve them in a book, so the c. 1760 broadsheet marks the first surviving print, not the beginning.

The tune and text most people know today were fixed in place by William B. Sandys, who printed the carol in Christmas Carols Ancient and Modern in 1833. That collection did the same job for several English carols that had been drifting between regional versions, and the London melody Sandys published is the one still sung.

Meaning & Interpretation

The carol is a news bulletin set to music. Verse by verse it retells the nativity as an announcement: the birth in Bethlehem, the angel arriving to a group of working shepherds, the instruction not to be afraid. The refrain then names what has been delivered, "tidings of comfort and joy", tidings being simply news.

The opening line frames all of it. Read correctly, it means something close to "may God keep you in good spirits, gentlemen, and let nothing upset you", followed immediately by the reason: Christ was born on Christmas Day. Comfort is offered first and justified second. The minor key does most of the emotional work, giving a song about reassurance an unexpectedly stern, marching quality that has made it a favourite for choirs and for brass bands.

Where does the comma go in God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen?

After "merry", not before it. The phrase is "rest you merry", an older idiom meaning may you remain in good spirits or in good health, so "merry" describes the resting rather than the gentlemen. Shakespeare uses the same construction in As You Like It, where Touchstone says "God rest you merry, sir". Printing the line as "God rest you, merry gentlemen" turns a blessing into a description of the crowd, which is why the misplaced comma bothers so many people who sing the carol.

Is it "ye" or "you"?

Both appear, and both are old. Printings differ from hymnal to hymnal, with "ye" now the more common on carol sheets and "you" closer to the original grammar, since "ye" was historically the subject form and this line needs an object. Neither version changes the meaning, and singers use whichever their book gives them.

Did Charles Dickens quote this carol?

Yes. In A Christmas Carol, published in 1843, a boy sings at Scrooge's keyhole and gets as far as "God bless you, merry gentleman! May nothing you dismay!" before Scrooge grabs a ruler and drives him off. Dickens swapped "bless" for "rest", used the singular "gentleman", and placed the comma in the position that has been irritating pedants ever since.

What does "tidings of comfort and joy" mean?

Tidings means news. The refrain announces that the news just delivered in the verse, the birth of a saviour, is news that brings comfort and joy. The word survives in modern English almost nowhere else except this carol and the phrase "good tidings", which is why it sounds so much more ceremonial than it originally did.