Seasonal music for Christmas until the first Sunday of the new year. I used to listen to this once a year, at the appropriate time. I had three versions, one very slow performance from the fifties. Then there was this one, recorded in the sixties. Finally I had one on cd. Was I a fan of this work?
Although called an oratorium, this is more like a collection of cantatas and earlier works, including three secular cantatas and a lost church cantata. All of them already published. Bach published them again in 1734/5.
Even though I tried to create this tradition for myself, it never really worked. It contains some really beautiful passages, and others are just plain boring. And overall, it never reaches the quality of his better known works like the St. Matthew Passion.