"God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen"
'Each other now embrace;'

Hymn 105, Christmas Season 
Christmas Carols Ancient and Modern, W. B. Sandys (1833)
London Carol, 18th century
​The Hymnal of the Episcopal Church 1982
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God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen was first published in 1833 when it appeared in "Christmas Carols Ancient and Modern," a collection of seasonal carols gathered by William B. Sandys. It is one of the oldest extant carols, dated to the 16th century or earlier. The earliest known printed edition of the carol is in a broadsheet dated to c. 1760.

The traditional English melody is in the minor mode; the earliest printed edition of the melody appears to be in a parody, in the 1829 Facetiae of William Hone. It had been traditional and associated with the carol since at least the mid-18th century, when it was recorded by James Nares under the title "The old Christmas Carol."

The carol is referred to in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, 1843: "...at the first sound of 'God bless you, merry gentlemen! 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." This carol also is featured in the second movement of the 1927 Carol Symphony by Victor Hely-Hutchinson.
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1. 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.

2. In Bethlehem, in Jury (Jewry or Judea)
This blessed babe was born
And laid within a manger
Upon this blessed morn
The which his mother Mary
Nothing did take in scorn.

3. 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.

​4. 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.

5. The Shepherds at those 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.

6. But when to Bethlehem they came,
Whereas this infant lay,
They found him in a manger,
Where oxen feed on hay,
His mother Mary kneeling
Unto the Lord did pray.

7. Now to the Lord sing praises,
All you within this place,
And with true love and brotherhood
Each other now embrace;
This holy tide of Christmas
All other doth deface.

O tidings of comfort and joy,
For Jesus Christ, our Saviour was born on Christmas day.

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Emporium #164

​The transitive use of the verb rest in the sense "to keep, cause to continue to remain" is typical of 16th to 17th century language (the phrase rest you merry is recorded in the 1540s). Etymonline.com notes that the first line "often is mis-punctuated" as "God rest you, merry gentlemen" because in contemporary language, rest has lost its use "with a predicate adjective following and qualifying the object" (Century Dictionary). This is the case already in the 1775 variant, and is also reflected by Dicken's replacement of the verb rest by bless in his 1843 quote of the incipit as "God bless you, merry gentlemen." The adjective merry in Early Modern English  had a wider sense of "pleasant; bountiful, prosperous." Some variants give the pronoun in the first line as ye instead of you, in a pseudo-archaism.

A variant text was printed in 1775 in The Beauties of the Magazines, and Other Periodical Works, Selected for a Series of Years. This text was reproduced from the song-sheet bought off a caroller in the street. This version is shown here alongside the version reported by W. B. Sandys (1833) and the version adopted by Carols for Choirs, (OUP, 1961) which has become the de facto baseline reference in the UK. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Rest_You_Merry,_Gentlemen