When Hallelujah Goes Viral

I had a"first" yesterday that was rather exciting. A co-worker forwarded me an e-mail with a link to a you-tube video that has now gone viral with over 5 million hits. Why was this a first? This is the first time I have been forwarded an e-mail like that where I knew the person that had actually created the video in question!

My sister Jennifer is quite a wiz at creating "outlandish" (as my father describes them) stunts that generate attention for whatever cause she happens to be working for at the time. She decided that creating a "Flash Mob" to sing Handel's Hallelujah chorus in the food court in a local mall might not just be fun, and good exposure for her business, but it could be a fantastic gift to her community.

Since the video posted last week over 5 million people have seen it. It has appeared on "Inside Edition" (apparently someone in charge of content there was unsure whether or not people in the far away town of Niagara Falls Ontario had ever heard of their show). It has been on a Toronto news station. It has been forwarded to millions. It has been plagiarized (YouTube was super awesome about this and took down the ripped off version almost immediately for copyright infringement) and comments on the video have been showing up about every 15 seconds for the past several days.

What is it about this that has people worked up? It's not like the idea of a "Flash Mob" is new anymore. I've seen some really great ones that brightened my day and made me smile. One of my favorites was in Central Station in Belgium. A large group of people created an incredibly well organized dance version of one of the famous "Sound of Music" numbers.

I love dance. I also understand how difficult it is to choreograph and organize people. The amount of work going into a demonstration like this is beyond me. I love that someone was that passionate and creatively driven. I love that it was largely in the name of fun...and 20 million people seem to have loved it enough to check it out online too.

So why the interest in this smaller (yet still impressive!) flash mob in the Seaway Mall in Welland? (I bet you don't even know where Welland is right?)

A lot of it seems to be about the music selected. While the Hallelujah Chorus is standard at Christmas, the "Glory to God" lyrics and the Jesus story it celebrates have become somewhat controversial in our hyper sensitive separation of church and state culture. It's okay to sing it at church, or go to see a choir perform it, but what does it mean if the performance is moved out of the church and into the mall? (a new kind of church in an age of materialism).

It moved people to tears. (Quite an astounding number actually...check the comments yourself)

It gave people faith and hope in a time when our world is struggling with poverty, job loss, hunger and war.

It inspired.

It made people want to sing and cheer and wish others a Merry Christmas.

It brought people together in celebration of community, and even those that identified themselves as atheist or agnostic found an unexpected level of shared joy from it. Faith in the potential goodness of humanity is always inspirational in times like these...it doesn't really matter if the message contains God language or not.

It also made some people angry. So angry in fact that comments have to be monitored and profanity removed from the YouTube site. While controversy and civil discourse are healthy things, hate and profanity are not. After speaking to my mother on the phone I learned that it had actually made someone so upset that they found my sister's home number and called her up to tell her so. Some people actively disliked it enough to watch the whole darn thing and click on the "dislike" button on YouTube. As of this morning, 275 people out of 5.2 million decided it was bad enough to warrant a "dislike."

...seriously...

I would like to remind my sister that 275 out of 5.2 million is a negligible number. It's not even one percent.

What is the bigger message?

People are hungry for togetherness and community. People inherently find joy in participating in the discovery of shared value. Even if the value for some could not be the story of Christ, it was the value of uncovering the beautiful potential of people. There is value discovered when a shining moment sweeps over an ordinary day.

The musical choice was not made as a political statement or with the intent to proselytize. It was also not made out of fear of offending anyone or being politically incorrect. Could it be that the music selected was chosen because of it's community power? Ever tried singing the Hallelujah chorus alone? It's just not possible. Every voice is needed. It's an inspirational Christmas classic that is as musically inclusive as you can get.

Hooray for the courage, drive and creativity it takes to pull something like this off.

We needed some honesty.

It's refreshing to see people find joy in something that was created free from the fear that sometimes causes us to second guess, hold back, under-perform, and not do justice to the human spirit.

Hallelujah!

Watch YouTube video here