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The historian Charles King knew what a lot of us know about George Frederick Handel's oratorio,

the Messiah, that it's maybe the greatest piece of participatory art ever created,

that its theme of Jesus' prophetic birth and resurrection draws thousands and thousands of believers

and non-believers to see and hear it performed around this holiday season.

King says people say they find something in the Messiah, something true and intimate and

magnetic, and that's certainly how he felt about it.

But then he heard the Messiah in a different way.

This was a while back in the middle of what he says turned out to be the

worst few years people can remember the COVID-19 pandemic, the insurrection on January 6th.

He and his wife Maggie live in D.C. so they aren't far from Capitol Hill. And in a new book,

King says they felt hemmed in by what seemed like a dark future.

So he was looking for something to let in a little healing light.

And a few years earlier, I had purchased for Maggie for Valentine's Day, one of these old phonographs, the VV50 of Victrola. And I thought, what if I could find the oldest

recording of Handel's Messiah, which is a piece of music that we loved, and Maggie is a singer

and a writer herself. And I thought, if I could find this ancient recording, I'll put it on this

ancient device, and then somehow

the world will be set a right.

And I did what anybody would do, which is go to eBay looking for this thing and found

a seller in London and bought this 1927 recording.

So we put the record on.

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