It’s Good to be Merry and Wise, by A. G. Gardiner

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And I do not forget that, together with its watch-night services and its good resolutions, Victorian England used to wish you “A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.” Nowadays the formula is “A Happy Christmas and a Prosperous New Year.” It is a priggish, sophisticated change, a sort of shame-faced implication that there is something vulgar in “being merry.” There isn’t. For my part, I do not want a Happy Christmas: I want a Merry Christmas. And I do not want a fat, prosperous New Year. I want a Happy New Year, which is a much better and more spiritual thing. If, therefore, I do not pour contempt on the Victorian habit of making good resolutions, it is not because I share Malvolio’s view that virtue is a matter of avoiding cakes and ale.* And if I refuse to deride Victorian England because it went to watch-night services it is not because I think there is anything wrong in a dance at the Ritz. It is because, in the words of the old song, I think “It is good to be merry and wise.”*

by A. G. Gardiner 1865-1946

Abridged

From ‘On Good Resolutions’, in ‘Windfalls’ (1920), a selection of essays by Alfred George Gardiner (1865-1946), who wrote under the pseudonym ‘Alpha of the Plough.’

* From William Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night. Olivia’s steward Malvolio scolds band of revellers for singing and shouting late into the night. Sir Toby retorts: “Art any more than a steward? Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?” That is, Malvolio has a right to be strait-laced if he pleases, but any moral superiority he may possess does not give him a right to make others behave as he does. It does not help that Maria, Olivia’s cousin, is one of the revellers, and Sir Toby thinks Malvolio is getting above himself.

* From an song by an anonymous author, given thus in Songs of England and Scotland London (1835):

It is good to be merry and wise,
It is good to be honest and true,
It is best to be off with the old love,
Before you are on with the new.

Précis

Comparing the way Christmas greetings had changed over the years, Gardiner noticed that the supercilious moderns now preferred prosperity to simple merriment, and neglected carols and good resolutions. The Victorians, Gardiner reflected, had understood the season better, for to be prosperous and content was not so rewarding as to be merry and wise.

Questions for Critics

1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?

2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?

3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?

Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.

Sevens

Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.

Why did Gardiner prefer the Christmas and New Year traditions of an earlier generation?

Suggestion

They seemed more fun, but less shallow.

Jigsaws

Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.

We send each other cards at Christmas. We write greetings in them. They reflect society’s values.

See if you can include one or more of these words in your answer.

IExchange. IIReveal. IIIWish.

Précis

Questions for Critics

Sevens

Jigsaws

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