To Drive the Cold Winter Away (All Hail to the Days)

"To Drive the Cold Winter Away", also known as "All Hail to the Days", "In Praise of Christmas", and "The Praise of Christmas", is a traditional English Christmas carol of Elizabethan origins. The carol first appeared as a broadside circa 1625, though its origins are unclear; Thomas Durfrey is sometimes erroneously identified as the lyricist. Though obscure, the carol has featured in numerous hymnals over the centuries. It is traditionally sung to the tune "When Phoebus did rest", under which it is printed in the Pepys and Roxburgh collections and Playford’s The English Dancing Master.

the lyrics:
All hail to the days that merit more praise
Than all the rest of the year,
And welcome the nights that double delights,
As well for the poor as the peer!
Good fortune attend each merry man's friend,
That doth but the best that he may;
Forgetting old wrongs, with carols and songs,
To drive the cold winter away.

This time of the year is spent in good cheer,
And neighbours together do meet,
To sit by the fire, with friendly desire,
Each other in love do greet;
Old grudges forgot, are put in the pot,
All sorrows aside they lay,
The old and the young doth carol his song,
To drive the cold winter away.

To mask and to mum kind neighbours will come
With wassails of nut-brown ale,
To drink and carouse to all in the house,
As merry as bucks in the dale;
Where cake, bread and cheese is brought for your fees,
To make you the longer stay;
At the fire to warm will do you no harm,
To drive the cold winter away.

When Christmastide comes in like a bride,
With holly and ivy clad,
Twelve days in the year, much mirth and good cheer,
In every household is had;
The country guise is then to devise
Some gambols of Christmas play,
Whereat the young men do best that they can,
To drive the cold winter away.

When white-bearded frost hath threatened his worst,
And fallen from branch and brier,
Then time away calls, from husbandry halls
And from the good countryman's fire,
Together to go to plough and to sow,
To get us both food and array;
And thus with content the time we have spent
To drive the cold winter away.