The short clip I heard of the field recording was the fastest version I have ever heard. I've listened to several recordings now & they seem to be slow and slower, much different from the recording & the way that Joe Hickerson sings it.

I think people think of it as Christmas because of the book it was published in. It might also be because the image is a little similar to the chorus of the Christmas song "Star in the East."

I went to the public library yesterday to find Ruth Crawford Seeger's book, American Folk Songs for Christmas, 1953, one source for the 1960's recordings.

From the introduction I learned that the collection was orientated toward & grew out of some school Christmas programs in the mid 1940's. Bright Morning Star is one of 9 introductory songs about stars and shepherds, only one of which is really a Christmas song. The are included because for the pageants, "They provide a frame for the Christmas picture, a path to and from the scene of the drama." p.8

As Johnross mentioned she credited it to Library of Congress "AAFS 1379 A1" The catalog is now digitized so I found that the source recording was done in 1937 of G.D.Vowell by Alan Lomax in Harlan, Kentucky. The title on the index card is "Bright Moving Star." There is at least one other recording in the archive with a title that includes "moving star"; I suspect bad handwriting and thoughtless transcription.