The lyrics to this song are quite simple but they contain a few interesting words and expressions:

have yourself – ‘have’ means ‘enjoy’ here and the ‘yourself’ adds emphasis to this expression, e.g. I’m going to have myself a nice cup of tea!

Yule-tide – Yule is the modern version of the Old English words ġéol  indicating the pre-Christian 12-day festival of “Yule”, observed by the Germanic peoples celebrating the god Odin.  It was later Christianized, resulting in the term “Christmastide” – that’s how we got Yule-tide in this song.

gay – although nowadays the word is commonly used to mean ‘homosexual’, its original meaning is ‘merry’, ‘lively” and ‘bright’. The word gay has had sexual connotations since the 17th century. A gay woman was a prostitute, a gay man a womanizer, a gay house a brothel. ‘Gay’ as an adjective meaning “homosexual” goes back at least to the late 1930s. As with many other words in English, this ‘new’ meaning is more used now and the original meaning is less known. 🙂

olden – from a long time ago (always used with a noun), e.g. ‘in the olden days’ or ‘in olden times’

yore – always of yore, meaning ‘of a long time ago’ , e.g. ‘This was once a Roman road in the days of yore.’ (a long time ago). Careful! This is a literary expression so unless you want to sound like an old book, you’d better avoid it. 🙂

the Fates – three goddesses who the ancient Greeks believe controlled people’s lives and decided when someone has to die (much like Sudičky in Slovak) The word has later changed into ‘fate’, meaning the power that controls our lives (osud in Slovak).

bough – a large branch of a tree (konár in Slovak). Careful! This is also a literary expression, rarely used in spoken English. Use the word ‘branch’ instead.