The Bristol-based composer, conductor and organist Arthur Warrell is responsible for the popularity of the carol. Warrell arranged the tune for his own University of Bristol Madrigal Singers, and performed it with them in concert on December 6, 1935. That same year, his elaborate four-part arrangement was published by Oxford University Press, under the title "A Merry Christmas: West Country traditional song". Warrell's arrangement is notable for using "I" instead of "we" in the words; the first line is "I wish you a Merry Christmas". It was subsequently republished in the collection Carols for Choirs, and remains widely performed. The earlier history of the carol is unclear. It is absent from the collections of West-countrymen Davies Gilbert and William Sandys, as well as from the great anthologies of Sylvester and Husk. It is also missing from The Oxford Book of Carols. In the comprehensive New Oxford Book of Carols, editors Hugh Keyte and Andrew Parrott describe it as "English traditional" and "he remnant of an envoie much used by wassailers and other luck visitors"; no source or date is given.
Origin
The greeting "a merry Christmas and a happy New Year" is recorded from the early eighteenth century. A closely related verse, dating from the 1830s, runs: It was sung by "mummers" – i.e. children who would go about singing from door to door to request gifts. An example is given in the short storyThe Christmas Mummers by Charlotte Yonge: After they are allowed in and perform a Mummers play, the boys are served beer by the farmer's maid. Other sources show this greeting as current in different parts of England during the nineteenth century. The origin of this Christmas carol lies in the English tradition wherein wealthy people of the community gave Christmas treats to the carolers on Christmas Eve, such as "figgy pudding" that was very much like modern-day Christmas puddings. A variety of nineteenth-century sources state that, in the West Country of England, "figgy pudding" referred to a raisin or plum pudding, not necessarily one containing figs.
Modern usage
Variations to the song's lyrics are common, the song typically runs: Another version, common in the USA, is:
