Winter, 1987.

I catch a ride to school every morning with my good friend Jimmy. I’m 16, but unlike most kids I haven’t gotten around to taking my driver’s test yet.

It just doesn’t seem that urgent. Jimmy, who lives just three houses down, has a car, and we go all the same places — school, theater, choir.

Besides —

THERE’S THE MUSIC.

A Christmas Gift That Lasts A Lifetime

Every morning when I got in the car, Jimmy would press play on his cassette deck — and The Messiah, the best known oratorio in the Western world, would begin to play.

No matter where the cassette was wound to, we knew within a few beats exactly where we were:

Exactly where we should be.

The previous fall, our choir director, the intrepid Miss Mary Clark, had insisted that our small-town Indiana high school choir perform the entire Christmas section of The Messiah — entirely from memory.

We practiced every night. Most of us practiced in the shower. Sometimes we practiced in our sleep.

The music stayed with us. Miss Clark knew, when she made us memorize that score, what we didn’t yet know: that it always would.

That winter, all winter, Jimmy and I continued singing, in the car — he the tenor part, me the alto.

Sure, maybe the other kids teased. We didn’t know, and we didn’t care.

They could have high school — we had Handel.

Hallelujuh

I think I must have flipped the channel past a commercial for a Messiah performance this week, because the music had been on my mind, for the first time in a few years.

This morning, as I made brunch for Gary and me, I found this version, Leonard Bernstein’s 1956 performance with the New York Philharmonic.

Of course, I still remember the alto part. I sang along.

I’m reading that Bernstein’s performance generated some controversy at the time. Whatever. As I listened to the Hallelujah Chorus, as I remembered those chilly morning rides singing with Jimmy, I felt something I never had before.

It wasn’t nostalgia. It wasn’t just the joy of beautiful music.

Images of a birth. Of a sacrifice. A sense of awe that tightens the throat.

For unto us a chid is born …

And he shall reign forever and ever

MERRY CHRISTMAS