General William Booth, founder of The Salvation Army, encouraged Salvationists to celebrate Christmas with cheerful greetings and songs of joy. “There’s a time for everything, and this is the merry time,” the Founder wrote. Almost 150 years after this article was published, his message is still timely as we celebrate Christmas 2025. 

This is reckoned a merry time. It is considered in this country the correct thing to wish everybody a merry Christmas and to get one yourself if you can. We pity those who have anything which makes them sad at the moment, and so it has become an annual custom to be merry and to help make other people as merry as you possibly can.

Now, we have no objection to this at all; indeed, we like the idea of special periods of rejoicing if you have anything to rejoice over, and it suits The Salvation Army, which believes in being merry all the general year-round, and at special times in particular.

We like the word “merry,” and welcome it in religious contexts, although many people think it altogether out of place there. [They think that] we soldiers of the Cross must always be solemn and melancholy and awful. Our hearts must be in our shoes, and our words must be few, antiquated and learned out of a book.

No, we say, and say thanks, that we have not been taught to practice our religion in this fashion. We ought to be merry, and in fact, we should be hypocrites if we were not merry. So, bring out the music—new music, the merriest music. There’s a time for everything, and this is the merry time. Now, for the song. Everybody sings—husbands, wives, children, neighbors, strangers, everybody sings—Praise the Lord.

“Praise Him with the sound of the trumpet: praise Him with the psaltery and harp. Praise Him with the timbrel and dance: praise Him with string instruments and organs. Praise Him upon the loud cymbals: praise Him upon the high-sounding cymbals.” And let the very trees of the field join in the chorus by clapping their hands.

What is the good of it all? Music is to the soul what the wind is to the ship, blowing her onward in the direction in which she is steered. Do you want to go faster and faster, to stir up prayer, and strengthen faith? Then bring in the music and raise the song. Sing of other heroes and their doings. Sing of the Victor of the cross. Sing of the blood and the fire … and sing of everything that you have read about in your Bibles or had revealed to you by the Holy Ghost.

Oh, if you are merry, sing and sing on till you are merrier still, and till every poor, trembling, doubting, weak-kneed soul about you loses his doubts and trembling, and is merry, too.

We are not allowed to sing this tune or that tune, do you say? Secular music, you say, belongs to the Devil? Does it? Well, if it did, I would plunder him of it, for he has no right to a single note of the whole seven. Every note, every strain, and every harmony is divine and belongs to us. So, consecrate your voices and your instruments. Bring out your cornets, harps, organs, flutes, violins, pianos, drums and everything else that can make melody. Offer them to God and use them to make all the hearts about you merry before the Lord.

This Christmas, let us all get into tune, and let there be this heavenly correspondence between the inside “heart” instrument and the outside voice, or whatever other instrument the merry sounds may be produced upon.

There is a stale, old argument about forgiveness of your enemies and disregarding grudges, a peculiarly gracious duty to be practiced at Christmas time to some. But that does not apply to our ranks, surely? Your Salvation Army people don’t burden themselves with the memory of grudges and enmities. They forgive as they go along. This is the very time of the year to get low—not only into the village of Bethlehem but to the stable. 

And now, strike off, with hearts and instruments in harmony. Do your best, and earth, hell and heaven will gather to listen. Your music shall be welcome and gladdening to the ears and heart of the King of kings.