The lyric from “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” is “And a happy New Year.” The line pairs a Christmas greeting with a wish for the coming calendar year.
The carol is an English traditional song associated especially with the West Country. Its best-known form was popularized by Arthur Warrell, who arranged it for the University of Bristol Madrigal Singers and performed it in 1935. Oxford University Press published his arrangement that same year.
The song’s history is less straightforward than its familiar melody suggests. Its roots probably lie in English caroling and wassailing customs, when singers visited households and hoped to receive food or drink, including figgy pudding. Some traditional versions change the final wording to “good tidings for Christmas and a happy new year.”
A common mix-up is treating “Noel” as the missing word because it is strongly associated with Christmas songs. Here, however, the paired greeting clearly ends with “New Year,” making “Year” the canonical answer.