who else has a family tradition of listening to Handel's "Messiah"
Every couple of years, when my grandmother was alive, my family used to drive from Canberra, where we lived, to Adelaided, where she lived, for Christmas. That's a fifteen-hour drive. When my brother got old enough to drive we'd do it all in one go, starting soon at dawn and ending well after dark, with my mum, my dad, and my brother taking turns to do the driving. Needless to say, it was not something any of us looked forward to. (This was before the days of budget airlines and cheap and plentiful flights in Australia.)
Anyway, naturally on such a drive you do a lot of listening to the radio. And it being Christmas, ABC Classic FM (the national classical music radio station) would always broadcast a live performance of Handel's
Messiah. And one year, I kid you not, while listening to the
Messiah and after being on the road for fifteen hours, the Hallelujah chorus started literally the
instant we turned the corner into my grandmother's street.
It was pretty amusing.