<P> 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". </P> <P> 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 (1961), and remains widely performed . </P> <P> The earlier history of the carol is unclear . It is absent from the collections of West - countrymen Davies Gilbert (1822 and 1823) and William Sandys (1833), as well as from the great anthologies of Sylvester (1861) and Husk (1864). 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 . </P> <P> The greeting "a merry Christmas and a happy New Year" is recorded from the early eighteenth century . The English custom of performing inside or outside homes in return for food and drink is illustrated in the short story The Christmas Mummers (1858) by Charlotte Yonge, in which a group of boys run to a farmer's door and sing: </P>

When was we wish a merry christmas written
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