Favorite Carols: "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen"
“O tidings of comfort and joy.”
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Few characters in literature are as loathsome as Charles Dickens’s Ebenezer Scrooge, at least before his Yule Eve encounters with the three spirits of Christmas. Prior to their nocturnal visits, Dickens described Scrooge as “a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone . . . a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner!
Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t taw it one degree at Christmas.1
On one frosty and foggy Christmas Eve, as was his custom, Scrooge worked late. And, as was equal to his custom, late he worked his clerk, Bob Cratchit. Hunkered in their bleak and bitter offices, Scrooge and Cratchit, with ink-stained fingers, scratched iron nibs across coarse paper. Outside, as the weather grew “foggier yet, and colder! Piercing, searching, biting cold,” carolers strolled London streets. They stopped at Scrooge’s door.
The owner of one scant young nose, gnawed and mumbled by the hungry cold as bones are gnawed by dogs, stooped down at Scrooge’s keyhole to regale him with a Christmas carol: but at the first sound of “God bless you merry gentleman! May nothing you dismay!”
Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action, that the singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog and even more congenial frost.2
As everyone knows, Scrooge thought Christmas a humbug, including its carols. Dickens selected “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” as the carol that flared Scrooge’s anger because the lyrics lay bare the heart of a man gone astray, caught in the clutches of the satanic power of greed, and not at all a merry gentleman—though very much in need of merriment. The carol also speaks of the miraculous redemption of Scrooge after his ghostly appointments. The lyrics sing of his awakened generosity and benevolence toward his fellow man. As Dickens put it, “He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. . . . And it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.”3
“God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” was a popular Christmas song in Victorian England. No one knows for sure who wrote the carol. It was first published in 1833, but probably dates back to at least the sixteenth century. Some say it was sung by traveling minstrels, waits, who sometimes served as town criers. Walking the snowy streets of London, waits gave voice to the story of Christ’s Nativity in song, adding to the festive atmosphere of Christmastide. In expressions of gratitude, townspeople gifted the waits with fruits and nuts, cakes and coins.
“God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” is one of the most enigmatic carols in the hymnal—and for the most banal reasons. It has to do with the placement of a comma and the meaning of “rest” and “merry” in the first line.
If the comma is placed after “ye” and before “merry”—God rest ye, merry gentlemen—the carol’s message is a petition that God would grant rest to gentlemen who’ve been a tad too merry, perhaps with the spiked punch. Though one could make the argument that getting tipsy or drunk on Christmas Eve is akin to falling under the satanic influence of “the Devil’s drink”—alcohol, not coffee—this makes little sense given the gravity of the lines that follow:
May nothing you dismay.
Remember Christ our savior
Was born on Christmas Day,
To save us all from Satan pow’r
When we were gone astray.
O tidings of comfort and joy,
Comfort joy.
O tiding of comfort and joy.
The comma, therefore, belongs after “merry” and before “gentlemen”—God rest ye merry, gentlemen. In this case, the carol’s message is a petition that God would bless needful gentlemen, like Scrooge, with rest and merriment. And if there was ever a literary character in need of rest and merriment, it was Ebenezer Scrooge.
Determining the correct placement of the comma, however, doesn’t quite unravel the riddle of the carol’s first line. To do that, we also have to determine what it means to “rest” and to be “merry.” In old English, resting meant more than sleep; it also meant “settled,” “keep,” or “make.” Merry, in old English meant “joy,” “gladness,” or “peace.” Literally, the sentence God rest ye merry, gentlemen means “God give you peace, good gentlemen” or “God make you joyful, good gentlemen.” And this makes perfect sense with the lines that follow, for nothing brings more joy or peace than remembering that “Christ our Savior was born on Christmas Day, to save us all from Satan’s power.”
“O tidings of comfort and joy.”
William Shakespeare used the phrase, “God rest you merry, sir” in As You Like It,4 as a farewell blessing. This seems to have been common in old England, not unlike the Jewish blessings of Numbers 6:24–26:
The Lord bless you, and keep you;
The Lord make His face shine on you,
And be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up His countenance on you,
And give you peace.
Could there be a better “fare thee well” than for the Lord to bless a departing friend in peace? I think not. So, whether you are near or far, or we’ll see each other this Yuletide season, my prayer for all y’all during this joyous Christmas time is, God rest you merry, my good friends.
“O tidings of comfort and joy.”
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, in Christmas Books (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2005), 6.
Dickens, A Christmas Carol, 11.
Dickens, A Christmas Carol, 78, 79.
William Shakespeare, As You Like It, 5.1.43, in William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, RSC 2nd edition, ed. Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen (New York: Modern Library, 2022), 509.