Star in the East
Updated: Nov 15, 2020
So, yes, its quite true... every year I seem to start work on a seasonal holidays album -- right then, when the season starts... exactly at the point I should have finished any such album so I could maybe sell it, yeah? And I now have about half a Christmas album done, right now, less than a week to go before the 25th.
Therefore, may I present to you, another one of my lovely (lonely) Christmas songs, full of regard for charity and human kindness, frightened for the soft little newborn brought forth in this season just getting started with cold and misery. Can you hear the wheezy complaint in the rough, steaming breaths of the beasts in the manger?
Star in the East is one of those shape-note tunes I love so well; new world folk hymnody, written by shape-note singing master William Walker of South Carolina in 1835.