when was we wish a merry christmas written
We Wish You a Merry Christmas The earlier history of the carol is unclear. It is absent from the collections of West-countrymen Davies Gilbert (1822 and 1823)[5] and William Sandys (1833),[6] as well as from the great anthologies of Sylvester (1861)[7] and Husk (1864).[8] It is also missing from The Oxford Book of Carols (1928). In the comprehensive New Oxford Book of Carols (1992), editors Hugh Keyte and Andrew Parrott describe it as "English traditional" and "[t]he remnant of an envoie much used by wassailers and other luck visitors"; no source or date is given.[9]