By Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts
Tuesday, October 16, 2007

One of Washington's favorite Christmas traditions is the Kennedy Center's annual "Messiah" Sing-along -- but a scheduling change has longtime attendees furious.

For more than three decades, fans of Handel's masterpiece have camped out -- sometimes overnight in freezing temperatures -- to score free tickets for the event, where amateurs vocalize along with professional choruses and orchestra. For years, the evening concert was held Dec. 23, the last (and, for many, the best) of all the holiday performances. This year it's at 2 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 9 -- two weeks early.

"It's such a cool and wonderful event," complained one regular participant. "They're completely dismantling the tradition and nobody seems to care." This year's 37th annual concert will conflict with parties, shopping, baking and other Christmas musicmaking around town -- forcing some die-hards to miss it for the first time in years.

Why the change? Some are buzzing that philanthropist Catherine Reynolds was responsible, because her foundation has become the first-ever underwriter. "We didn't set the date," said husband Wayne Reynolds, who agrees the concert probably should be closer to Christmas. And those rumors that she's claiming hundreds of the free tickets? Not true, says the Kennedy Center: Reynolds will be honored at a lunch before the event, and will receive about 20 seats -- standard for a major donor.

The real reason for the date change, said a KenCen spokesman, is too few venues and too many events. With the Eisenhower Theater closed for renovations, the center had to squeeze most holiday music into the 2,400-seat Concert Hall. The National Symphony Orchestra's own "Messiah" is there the weekend before Christmas, including a Sunday matinee on the 23rd, and programmers felt any more "Messiah" would be just too much to Handel. The Pops holiday concert was slated for the weekend before that. So the coveted Dec. 23 night slot went to the Choral Arts Society of Washington.

Matthew Lesko, that infomercial dude, enjoying hot wings and mojitos Sunday with his wife at the Argonaut bar on H Street NE. For once he was not wearing one of his question-mark-emblazoned suits -- he went conservative in red pants, rainbow-hued sweater, green sneaks, mismatched socks -- but did drive his question-mark-emblazoned Mini Cooper, bearing an Obama sticker, in case you were wondering whom he's endorsing.

T.I. will have to wait a little longer to celebrate his big BET Hip Hop Awards victory: The rapper will remain in federal custody until at least Friday, when he gets a bond hearing in Atlanta on charges he tried to buy machine guns and silencers, which you totally can't do when you're a convicted felon like him. His arrest Saturday forced him to miss that night's award show; the feds are hoping he'll also miss the premiere parties for his new movie, "American Gangster."

Divorce rumors are flying all over Europe, but the spokesman for French President Nicolas Sarkozy had no comment yesterday when repeatedly asked if Sarkozy and his wife, Cécilia, are splitsville. France's first lady famously skipped lunch with the Bush family this summer and will not accompany her husband on a state visit to Morocco next week.

"I love having everything documented."

-- Paris Hilton, explaining to Newsweek why her image-overhauling humanitarian trip to Rwanda next month will involve a film crew -- or who knows, maybe she was talking about that sex tape, or the 24/7 coverage of her jail stint.