God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

As I did a song with a similar tune, I may as well do this

This is a traditional English carol, and there are a lot of traditional English carols out there. Yesterday I did the Huron Carol, which follows a tune which is somewhat similar.

This is a rather well known, but much under-appreciated song - Christmas songs can be in a minor key. Why, oh why, do the editors of hymns books think that it is a good idea to try to ‘improve’ on the poetry of the original hymn writers and poets? And why, oh why, do churches buy new hymn books that have ruined the old hymns and substituted garbage for fine words?

Before I go into a discussion about the above statement, I will add the lyrics.

God rest you merry, gentlemen,
Let nothing you dismay,
For Jesus Christ, our Saviour,
Was born upon this day
To save us all from Satan’s power
When we were gone astray.
Refrain:
O tidings of comfort and joy,
comfort and joy;
O tidings of comfort and joy!

In Bethlehem in Jewry
This blessed Babe was born,
And laid within a manger
Upon this blessed morn;
The which his mother Mary
Nothing did take in scorn.

Refrain

From God our heavenly Father
A blessed angel came,
And unto certain shepherds
Brought tidings of the same,
How that in Bethlehem was born
The Son of God by name. Refrain

’Fear not,’ then said the angel,
‘Let nothing you affright;
This day is born a Saviour
Of virtue, power and might,
So frequently to vanquish all
The friends of Satan quite.’ Refrain

The shepherds at these tidings
Rejoiced much in mind,
And left their flocks a-feeding
In tempest, storm and wind,
And went to Bethlehem straightway
This blessed Babe to find. Refrain

But when to Bethlehem they came,
Whereat this Infant lay,
They found him in a manger
Where oxen fed on hay;
His mother Mary, kneeling,
Unto the Lord did pray. Refrain

Now to the Lord sing praises,
All you within this place,
And with true love and brotherhood
Each other now embrace.
The holy tide of Christmas
All others doth efface. Refrain

he first line of that carol deserves a comment regarding grammar and punctuation.
People comment on two things about it. First, that the word is always “you” and not “ye”, and second, that there should be a comma after the word merry, not after the word you, so it goes God rest you merry,… Gentlemen, not God rest you, … Merry Gentlemen.
The two points are related.
You is the accusative case of the second person plural, so ‘you’ is the object of the verb ‘rest’ which is used as a transitive verb. God is the subject of the verb, and the verb is in the subjunctive mood, because it expresses a wish or third person imperative. As you will recall (from such examples as “The Lord be with you” and “Be it this Christmas eve” and “God bless you”, or indeed just “bless you”) the third person singular of the subjunctive in English looks like the infinitive, and doesn’t have an s on the end. That is we say “God bless you”, not “God blesses you”. The latter is the indicative. The former is the wish (may God bless you) expressed in the subjunctive, so it does not require the “may”.
So “rest” in “God rest you merry” is in the subjunctive, and means “May God rest you merry”.
“Merry” is the complement of the verb. Rest can (or could in the past) take a number of such complements, such as rest happy, rest content, and it was also used transitively either with a reflexive pronoun (I rest myself content) or with a personal pronoun when you make someone else rest happy or rest merry etc. In this case we ask that God will rest merry the present company (Gentlemen).
“Gentlemen” is in the vocative, and addresses the assembled company. The phrase is exactly comparable to if we were to say “God bless you, Gentlemen” but instead of wishing for blessing we ask for resting merry. Quaint, heh?
If the pronoun were written as “ye” the grammar would be scrambled, because “ye” is really the nominative and would suggest that the assembled company is the subject of the verb. But we’ve already had the subject, God. Then it would look as though God were the object, and we were saying “May you gentlemen rest God merry, please.” But that is not the point.
So although this is an archaic text which preserves a lot of quaint old English, we don’t want to go in for any fake archaising, like substituting “ye” in place of “you”. No: the text almost certainly should be written with “you”, because “you” is quite correct as the second person plural accusative.

I think this means “May God give merryness (happiness) and rest to all men.”

Did you read this far? Of course not.