It's December. Messiahs are popping up hither and yon. Handel's beloved oratorio is to choruses what shopping is to Macy's: this is the time of year when they break even. Messiah keeps a lot of choruses in the black.
Which I always find a bit funny, given that Messiah is actually spring equinox fare. Librettist Charles Jennens wrote it as a counter to those pesky Deists who had the temerity to suggest that Jesus of Nazareth just might have been an ordinary mortal guy instead of some paranormal whosis. Because the christian mythos would crumble should JofN remain dead after his execution, along comes the notion of his boinging back to life. By some skewed logic (or just plain old wishful thinking) that boinging back to life becomes evidence of JofN's being the offspring of the author of it all, or perhaps even the author of it all himself. But of course it indicates no such thing. The guy could come back to life after certified clinical death and that says nothing about his being supernatural or son of the author of it all or even the author of it all himself. The only thing it proves is that our notions of certified clinical death might need some revising—or at least that they did in Roman-era Palestine.
But I digress. The basic point of Messiah is that JofN was the foretold savior of the Jewish people as outlined in their historical/fabulist writings. Hysterical screwiness ran with that basic idea and a monstrous fictional weed erupted from a seemingly innocuous seed. The Deists were making a game attempt to bring some fresh air to all that musty ignorance, and Jennens didn't like that one damn bit. He wanted his JofN intact and unearthly—haloed, white-robed, long-haired, Anglo-Saxon, and British as all get-out, a CofE JofN for all seasons. He couldn't ram the point home without zeroing in on that boinging-back-to-life jazz.
Thus JofN's birth—originally told in two anonymous fabulist compilations that contradict each other at numerous junctures, neither with a grain of plausibility—is dealt with during about ten minutes of Messiah, the rest being devoted to the stickier wickets of JofN's short career and execution, ending with the cloud of fancy that blankets the whole. It's not oriented towards the winter solstice and Handel never intended it as such. For much of its history it was performed as an adjunct to the christian vernal equinox observations. But change happens. Instead of being associated with bunnies and eggs and frilly dresses and fancy bonnets, Messiah now comes wrapped in holly wreaths and drips eggnog. One superstition replaces another. I'm OK with that.
A long-standing tradition has to do with the ever-popular Hallelujah Chorus that ends Part 2. Scuttlebutt has it that King George II was so taken with the piece at the 1743 London premiere that he stood up and the audience dutifully followed suit. (So much for Enlightenment ideals about all men being created equal.) It's a nice story, but it doesn't wash. There's no evidence that George was even there, and you'd think that the presence of such a high-voltage celebrity would get at least some mention in the British press, especially given the amount of coverage (mostly negative) that surrounded the Messiah premiere. The first reference to the Hallelujah stand-up doesn't come along until 1756, well into Messiah's successful run at the Foundling Hospital. Back in 1743 London audiences didn't even like it. Handel attempted a 1745 revival, with middling results. It wasn't until it became a fundraiser for London's Foundling Hospital that Messiah found its legs and its audience. It took a while longer for it to acquire the status of an unofficial national anthem.
And that is how, I suspect, the stand-up tradition really took root. Audiences weren't standing so much for the Hallelujah as they were standing for Crown & Country, invincible British pride as the small island nation transformed itself into a great world power. Staunch English protestantism went right along with that. The British colonies in America were inheritors of English culture so the stand-up practice established itself here as well, despite the religious freedom spelled out in no uncertain terms in the nation's founding documents.
Hallelujah stand-up doesn't make any sense here. In fact it's kinda offensive. There is no weirder sight in town than a Jewish couple rising to their feet for the Hallelujah Chorus. What do they plan to do next—kiss the bishop's ring? After all, the Hallelujah Chorus is all about JofN's elevated mythological status. The stand-up tradition reflects a whiff of stealth religious propaganda, right along with the now-fading practice of indicating dates as "A.D." (Anno Domini) instead of the far preferable "C.E." for "common era."
Let a thousand Messiahs bloom; it's a cool piece and richly deserves its place in the winter sun. But I will stand up only when intermission arrives. I don't care if I'm the only person in a 3,000-seat auditorium who remains sitting for the Hallelujah. I will plant myself firmly on my fat fanny as a determined expression of my Constitutionally-guaranteed freedom from publically enforced religious brainwashing.