One year ago, I wrote in this newspaper, a few brief words about Handel's Messiah and its annual and wheezing outing in every Irish hall and clubhouse fit to stage it.

It was a polite, but heartfelt, plea to those good choirmasters, musicians and sponsors who take upon their capable, selfless musical shoulders the heavy burden of choosing and directing the production of this and other great works of near-antiquity at this time of year. The plea I had back then was simple: that these good souls might move past the yellow dog-eared, much-scrawled scores of what George Bernard Shaw referred to over a century ago, as Messiah's annual "regulation performance", and move from there to the bright places lit by the sunny music of other equally cheerful songsmiths.

But it was not to be, and the plea fell into the chilly waters of public indifference, bubbled briefly, but helplessly, and sank without trace.

In fact, if anything, things are worse this year, with a quick squint at the web a few minutes ago throwing up 11 different Messiahs in this country this month. The National Concert Hall, in particular, has surpassed itself in signing itself up for an impressive, if frightfully unimaginative, tally of five outings.

Now, for fear of being branded a philistine, I must point out again my conviction in the excellence of Messiah and its fine suitability for the time of the year. But is there really a need for 11 performances? For the seven different choirs that I could find, not to mention the ones that I couldn't, who will be humming and strumming and purring and roaring their seven different courses through Handel's eloquent Oratorical and Italianate description of the birth and significance of Christ? Particularly when there's almost no other work which feels the lively, warm breath of a good choir more than once over the Christmas? Heavens, no!

For I am afraid that, by dint of repetition, this outstanding work will take on the relevance of the commonest of Christmas carols, or a new Discworld novel, or a strike by French air traffic controllers.

So I find myself again this year, sounding like a shrill Scrooge or a cold drip in a warm place, asking again that Messiah is given a break, a holiday from a public who's heard the lot before. That the other great, if less traditionally Christmas-clung, works are dragged, blinking but twinkling into the earshot of the public.

One could suggest Britten's sparkling Ceremony of Carols or Berlioz's L'Enfance du Christ, both of which, I believe have been performed only once since January - unlike Bach's Christmas Oratorio and Monteverdi's Christmas Vespers, both of which, to the best of my knowledge, have remained shelf-stuck and despairingly silent this year. Or perhaps we could be more adventurous and set aside the noose of seasonality and start to make our way through the bittersweet French school and DuruflΘ's outstanding Requiem (one performance this year by the increasingly interesting Trinity Choir).

Or Alain's consummate and brief Messe Modale which I don't believe has ever been performed in this country, the three most famous of Langlais's exquisite Mass settings: Missa in Simplicitate, Missa Salve Regina and Messe Solennelle, the last of which will be the exciting musical backdrop to the Christmas day service in Christchurch Cathedral. Or, turning back the clock and digging into the vast, rich depths of Gregorian Chant and the Liber usualis, much of which remains sadly under-explored and under-performed in this country, we can find the various settings of Puer natus in Bethlehem, the Hodie Christus natus est, the O magnum mysterium, all of which could only be magical and mystical if sung with spirit in a darkened church. Or, travelling outside the bounds of Catholic tradition, we could find the resonant and radiant Christmas music of the Orthodox churches, the Russian and Ukrainian, the Greek, the Syrian and Armenian and especially the Georgian, all of whose fertile and ancient musical traditions remain thoroughly unknown to the Irish public.

So, to finish up, let's try to give Handel a break next year and see if there are any other gems in the great and free store of collected musical wisdom and meaning.