Handel’s Messiah has become such a Christmas staple that it’s easy to forget it started out life as an Easter oratorio, telling of Christ’s birth (part one), life and death and resurrection (part two, ending with the Hallelujah Chorus), and victory over sin (part three). The piece’s concern is theology rather than narrative or drama, so it’s not easy to hold together in performance, though the Handel & Haydn Society under new music director Grant Llewellyn made a respectable try at Symphony Hall last weekend.

Highlights included the lucid strands of canon and counterpoint from the choir — "And He shall purify," for example. The zippy, clipped "All we like sheep" had this as well, plus one of the most moving moments of the two-and-three-quarter-hour performance, a somber, reverent "and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all." Soprano Nancy Argenta supplied the other most memorable moment, the opening phrase of "I know that my redeemer liveth," where her bright, sometimes piercing voice shone round about with glory. Argenta sang mostly off the book, instead looking radiantly out into the audience, and it made a difference. The rest of the soloists — countertenor Brian Asawa, Finnur Bjarnason, and baritone Stephen Powell — were solid but not involving, declaiming the Biblical quotations rather than sharing them.

Grant Llewellyn’s conducting showed evidence of serious thought, but it still fell into that double-dotted lockstep limbo where the music needs to be either quicker (so that it flows) or more thoughtful (in which case you lean against the double-dotting). To my ears, at least, the strings sounded less than sweet on more than one occasion. And the Hallelujah Chorus was underpowered. Perhaps Llewellyn didn’t want it to overshadow the rest of the work, but if this showpiece isn’t going to overwhelm with its massive majesty (as it did before the advent of period-instrument performances), it needs to exalt us with a white-hot ecstasy. Like The Nutcracker and the Boston Pops, Messiah will doubtless always be a holiday event in Boston, but it needs to be an event, period.

Remaining performances of the Handel & Haydn Messiah are this Friday, December 7, at 8 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday at 3 p.m.