Gentri has released a live performance version of We Three Kings from their new Christmas album titled Season of Light:
This spirited version of We Three Kings is based on an 1857 Christmas song written by John Henry Hopkins, Jr.
Hopkins was a theologian and a priest. He composed both the music and the words to We Three Kings, breaking with longstanding 19th century tradition. The song became popular at a time when The Magi were something of a Christmas fad. It became the first American written Christmas carol to achieve widespread acclaim in the mid-19th Century.
The fact that the Magi were Biblical was not lost on either the media or the Christmas-celebrating public. They were popular in song, popular in art, popular in decorating and even popular in everyday conversation. Frequently, the Magi were the subject of sermons, newspaper articles, stage plays, Church pageants, orchestras and operas.
In fact, in an era before Rudolph, Frosty and other made-up characters of Christmas...
