The story behind We Wish You a Merry Christmas
We Wish You a Merry Christmas is a West Country English wassail song. Wassailers went from house to house in the Christmas season, sang at the door, and expected food and drink for the wish they brought. This particular song makes the bargain comically blunt. The visitors wish the household a merry Christmas and a happy new year, they announce that they bring good tidings, and then they demand figgy pudding. They would like it brought out here. They will not go until they get some. The tune family is traditional, the sort of sturdy major melody a cold group can sing in unison on a doorstep.
The words, in forms close to what we sing, were printed across the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but the version that conquered choirs is newer than the folk text. Arthur Warrell, a Bristol organist, conductor, and lecturer at the University of Bristol, arranged the song for his University of Bristol Madrigal Singers. They performed that elaborate four part setting in concert on 6 December 1935, and Oxford University Press published it the same year as A Merry Christmas, calling it a West Country traditional song. Warrell did not invent the wish or the pudding. He made a folk demand into a choral encore that parishes now treat as standard.
History and origins
Wassailing is older than any one carol. The word relates to a drinking toast, and the custom mixes blessing and begging. In the cider counties of the west of England, singers visited both houses and orchards. House wassails like this one focus on the door, the kin inside, and the food. Figgy pudding is not a vague sweet. It is a spiced pudding with raisins, the fig or plum pudding of a Christmas table, dense enough to be a real reward for standing in the street. The humor of the song depends on the social fact that the singers are partly guests and partly gentle blackmailers. Good tidings are the gift they claim to bring. Pudding is the fee.
Folk versions vary, as doorstep songs do. Some texts adjust the tidings line. Some are shorter. A singer in Somerset might have a cousin of this chorus under another local title and still be in the same family. The Roud Folk Song Index lists the famous carol among English traditional songs, which is the right company. It is not a hymn from a named divine. It is not a theater song with a publication date in the 1850s. When collectors wrote it down, they were catching a custom. The demand not to leave until the pudding appears is the custom speaking.
Warrell's 1935 arrangement is why the song sounds the way a church choir expects. He set it in confident parts, with the sort of bounce and dynamic marking that a madrigal group can rehearse and a congregation can later approximate. Oxford's publication put that writing into the hands of choirs far from Bristol. When Carols for Choirs later included the arrangement, parish cupboards inherited it again. One oddity of Warrell's printed text is often noticed by careful singers: his opening can read I wish you a merry Christmas, singular, while the title everyone says, and the chorus most crowds sing, is We. The folk idea was always a group at the door. The plural won. The arrangement is still his.
The twentieth century then did what microphones always do. A song that takes thirty seconds on a porch became a recorded closer, a television sign off, and a school concert finale. The pudding verse survived because it is funny and because it is specific. Abstract blessings are easy to forget. Figgy pudding is not. American singers sometimes have to be told what the food is, and once told, they sing the demand with even more delight. The wish itself, merry Christmas and a happy new year, covers the whole festive hinge that Deck the Halls also knows. This song adds the joke that the wishers intend to be paid.
Nothing in the history requires a single medieval author or a secret meaning for the pudding. Raisins are raisins. A doorstep is a doorstep. Bristol in 1935 is the moment the traditional song became the choral piece heard under the familiar title. If a performance is stiff, it has forgotten the porch. If a performance is only a shout, it has forgotten that Warrell wrote real parts. The good version remembers both: a West Country custom, and a lecturer's arrangement that carried the custom indoors.
Full lyrics
Verse 1
We wish you a merry Christmas,
We wish you a merry Christmas,
We wish you a merry Christmas
And a happy new year.
Refrain
Good tidings we bring
To you and your kin.
We wish you a merry Christmas
And a happy new year.
Verse 2
Now bring us some figgy pudding,
Now bring us some figgy pudding,
Now bring us some figgy pudding,
And bring it right here.
Verse 3
We will not go until we get some,
We will not go until we get some,
We will not go until we get some,
So bring it right here.
Verse 4
We wish you a merry Christmas,
We wish you a merry Christmas,
We wish you a merry Christmas
And a happy new year.
The text above follows a standard public domain version. Singers will meet small changes from book to book, especially in folk carols.
Lyrics presented for educational and personal use. Sing along responsibly this holiday season!
Meaning and symbolism
On the surface the song is a toast and a bill. Merry Christmas is the blessing. Figgy pudding is the price. Under that joke is a real ethic of the season as these singers understood it. A house that has plenty should open the door and share the feast. The singers are not ashamed to ask. They call the asking good tidings, binding the religious word tidings to food and kin. Christmas, in this lyric, is not only a story told at the crib. It is a test of whether the people inside will feed the people outside.
The refusal to leave until they get some is comedy, and it is also persistence. Hospitality delayed is hospitality doubted. The happy new year at the end stretches the wish past Christmas Day, just as wassailing season itself ran through the dark weeks. There is no stable, no star, and no need to invent one. The symbolism is social. Pudding stands for the feast. The closed door stands for a failed feast. When a choir in surplices sings the threat not to go, they are playing at begging from a position of comfort, which is why the song stays humorous. The older custom was closer to an actual transaction.
Fun facts and statistics
- The song is a West Country English wassail carol in which visitors wish joy and ask to be fed.
- Figgy pudding is a spiced raisin pudding of the Christmas table, not a vague metaphor.
- The folk text and tune family are older than any single choral edition.
- Arthur Warrell arranged it for the University of Bristol Madrigal Singers, who sang that setting on 6 December 1935.
- Oxford University Press published his version the same year as A Merry Christmas, a West Country traditional song.
- Some printings of his arrangement open with I wish you, while popular use settled on We wish you.
- The line about not leaving until the pudding arrives is the comic heart of the custom.
Top 5 most popular renditions
Ray Conniff Singers
1962
The Ray Conniff Singers named their 1962 Columbia album We Wish You a Merry Christmas and sang the traditional greeting as title music of that easy listening Christmas set. Conniff's method, a choir of pop voices with light rhythm, fits a song that is already a group at the door. The pudding verses give the album a moment of humor among ballads. Because the arrangement is modern studio craft laid on a public domain tune, it shows the folk carol's second life after Warrell had made it choral and before later decades made it a television closer. The wish is delivered as sparkle rather than as a threat. The West Country demand is still in the words if the singers do not skip them.
Ray Conniff Singers
John Denver and the Muppets
1979
John Denver and the Muppets recorded We Wish You a Merry Christmas for the 1979 album and television project A Christmas Together. A promotional single even paired the song with other group numbers, which is the right job for a wishing carol. Human and puppet voices can divide the tidings and the pudding lines, turning the doorstep play into something a camera understands. Denver's folk directness keeps the tune from becoming only novelty. The Muppet energy honors the joke that the singers will not leave. Families who met the song there often remember the pudding more clearly than they remember any choral edition. The performance is comedy with a real traditional text underneath, not a new set of words.
John Denver and the Muppets
John Williams
1992
John Williams and the Boston Pops, with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, included We Wish You a Merry Christmas on the 1992 album Joy to the World. The Pops treatment is orchestral and public, the sound of a holiday concert finale rather than of a Somerset porch. Chorus and brass can still make the figgy pudding lines laugh. Williams's sense of ceremony gives the final wish a sendoff that concert audiences expect at the end of a December program. The tune remains the traditional one Warrell had harmonized, not a new theme. Hearing a great film composer conduct it shows how completely a begging carol had become civic music. The kin inside the house are now a hall full of strangers sharing the same toast.
John Williams
Arthur Fiedler
1970
Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops built Christmas Festival programs that treated traditional English carols as concert encores, and We Wish You a Merry Christmas belongs to that Pops habit of ending a night with a greeting everyone can sing. The 1970 album A Christmas Festival gathers the same repertory, bright winds and crisp rhythm under public domain tunes. Even when the piece is played in a medley spirit, the opening wish is long enough to be recognized in two bars. Fiedler's audiences came to join in, which restores the social fact of the wassail even inside a grand hall. Nobody brings actual pudding to Symphony Hall. Everyone understands the offer of a merry Christmas and a happy new year. The arrangement style is mid century American pops, the tune is older, and the combination is why the song still closes programs.
Arthur Fiedler
Choir of King's College, Cambridge
1961
After Oxford printed Warrell's parts, the 1961 book Carols for Choirs put We Wish You a Merry Christmas into the standard Anglican choir library, and the Choir of King's College, Cambridge, has sung that four part tradition on Christmas broadcasts and recordings around that repertory. The sound is boys and men, exact consonants on figgy, and a crescendo on the refusal to leave. A college chapel is a long way from a cider county doorstep, yet the arrangement was made for indoor choirs, so the mismatch is historical rather than accidental. King's performances taught listeners across the world to expect harmony, not unison shouting, on the final wish. The pudding verse keeps the piece from becoming a mere benediction. It is still a cheerful demand.
Choir of King's College, Cambridge
Sheet music
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Notes for singers
If you place We Wish You a Merry Christmas in a December service, a school program, or a living room sing, teach Traditional before you add harmony. A confident melody lets guests enter on the refrain. Say the names when you introduce it. The words are credited to Traditional, and the music to Traditional. The year to remember is traditional, and the place to name is West Country, England.
This sits in the library as a folk carol. Let that tradition set the tempo. A lullaby loses its point if it is hurried. A dance carol loses its point if every syllable is precious. Leave a breath at the end of the verse so the next line feels chosen rather than chased.
The song is a West Country English wassail carol in which visitors wish joy and ask to be fed. Hold that fact in the introduction you speak, not only in a program note. Figgy pudding is a spiced raisin pudding of the Christmas table, not a vague metaphor. Those two details give a listener a reason to hear the song as a made thing, not as wallpaper.
When the group is small, one voice can carry the verse and everyone can take the refrain. When the group is a choir, decide in advance whether you are telling a story or painting a picture. Story songs want clear words. Picture songs can bloom. We Wish You a Merry Christmas will tell you which it is after a single unaccompanied read through.
Questions readers ask
It is a traditional British Christmas pudding, dense and spiced, made with raisins or figs and suet, the kind of pudding set on a holiday table and sometimes brought in flaming. In the carol it is the food the wassailers demand in exchange for their greeting. It is not a symbol that needs a secret code. Once American singers know it is a real dessert, the verse about bringing it right here, and not leaving without it, becomes a clear joke about hospitality.
He was a Bristol musician and a lecturer at the University of Bristol. He arranged the traditional West Country song in elaborate four parts for the University of Bristol Madrigal Singers, who performed it on 6 December 1935. Oxford University Press published that arrangement the same year under the title A Merry Christmas, identifying the source as a West Country traditional song. He did not write the folk wish from nothing. He made the version choirs still use famous.
No. The folk text and the tune family are older, a wassail custom of wishing a house well and asking for food, with printed relatives in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Warrell's 1935 writing is the choral standard, not the origin. Some of his printed lines even say I wish you, while the title that spread is We wish you. Singers who use a unison traditional form are within their rights. Singers who use the famous harmony are usually singing Warrell.
Because the song is a begging carol, a doorstep play. The visitors have given their tidings and their wish. They want figgy pudding brought out to them, and they say they will not go until they get some. In custom, that was half joke and half real expectation of seasonal hospitality. In a concert it is entirely a joke, sung by people who will in fact leave when the concert ends. The line keeps the social meaning visible. A Christmas wish, in this tradition, expects the house to answer with food.
Why this song endures
The song lasts because the first line is the thing you were going to say anyway. We wish you a merry Christmas is a greeting that became a melody. Once the greeting has a tune, it is hard to speak it without singing it. The pudding verse gives the greeting a scene and a laugh, so the piece is not only a card. It is a tiny play. Warrell's parts made that play available to every choir that owns a set of carol books. Public domain status did the rest. Arrangers can add handclaps, descants, and key changes without asking a living composer's estate, though they ought to remember whose 1935 writing they are decorating.
It also lasts because it expects a response. Many carols talk to heaven or to a child who cannot answer. This one talks to the household and waits for pudding. Even when the pudding is imaginary, the form is social. A season that can become private and commercial still has a song that says open the door and share. That is an old enough idea to survive changes in dessert. Figgy pudding can be explained in one sentence. The wish does not need explaining at all. Between those two facts, a traditional begging carol and a Bristol choir arrangement keep finding the last slot on the program.