The lyric from “God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen” is “Let nothing you dismay.”
The line belongs to the traditional English Christmas carol’s opening verse, which presents the Nativity as a message of comfort and joy. The carol is also known by the title “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” and by the refrain “Tidings of Comfort and Joy.”
Its exact age is uncertain. An anonymous manuscript from the 1650s contains an early version, while the earliest known printed edition dates to about 1760. William Sandys helped popularize the carol by including it in his 1833 collection “Christmas Carols Ancient and Modern.”
A frequent misunderstanding concerns the grammar of the first line. In older English, “rest you merry” meant roughly “may God keep you peaceful and happy”; “merry” did not originally describe the gentlemen. That is why the traditional punctuation differs from the modern reading. The familiar melody is in a minor mode, although another “Cornish” tune was also printed in the 19th century.