Christmas Comes but Once a Year Lyrics
Two lines say that Christmas comes only once a year, and that when it arrives it brings good cheer. People have used the saying for centuries as a gentle excuse for a treat, and a rhyming form was in print by 1573.
Christmas Comes but Once a Year
Christmas comes but once a year,
And when it comes it brings good cheer.
Printed from https://nurseryrhymes.co/christmas-comes-but-once-a-year/
- Type
- Mother Goose
- Tune
- Said like a saying, with a smile on the word cheer
- Best for ages
- 2 to 8 years
What Does Christmas Comes but Once a Year Mean?
The first line is plain counting: the feast comes once, and a child has a long wait for it. The second line says what the wait is for, good cheer. Cheer means a happy, warm mood, and in older English it also meant the food and drink laid out to make people happy, so a table with good cheer was a full and welcoming one. Today a parent can hear it as warmth, food and company all together.
People also say the line out loud when someone takes an extra treat or spends a little more than usual. It means that a special time is allowed to be special because it is rare. Year and cheer rhyme when spoken, which is part of why the saying sticks in the head.
With a small child it is a good way to talk about waiting. Why do things that come rarely feel bigger than things that come every day?
History and Origin
The earliest rhyming form usually quoted comes from Thomas Tusser's farming book in verse, Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, in the enlarged edition that Richard Tottel printed in 1573. In modern spelling it reads: "At Christmas play and make good cheer, for Christmas comes but once a year." A shorter version of Tusser's book had appeared in 1557, and reference works differ about whether the couplet was already in it.
The saying was well known by 1602. Philip Henslowe's account book records payments that November to several playwrights, including Thomas Heywood and John Webster, for a play called Christmas Comes but Once a Year. That play has not survived. The Little Mother Goose (1912) prints the two lines on their own as a rhyme.
Learning Activities
- Paper-chain wait: make a chain with one link for each day left, and tear one off each morning while saying the first line.
- Cheer list: ask each child to name one thing that makes a table feel cheerful, such as something warm to eat, a song or a visitor.
- Rare and special: talk about something that happens once a year in your family and why it feels different from an ordinary day.
- Rhyme hunt: say year and cheer, then find more words that sound the same, such as near, dear and clear.