Christmas season brings out our best, it seems Prudent to say.  The Boston Pops prepares and presents a wonderful Christmas presentation of the best symphonic quality, paired with a just-as-wonderful choral group from Brookline.  Our opportunity to experience the event was by invitation from family members, and it is already the best gift we could have received.  It’s not Prudent for Prudence to receive things when she is trying to divest her home of “things.”

We were in a modern, enclosed arena, within which it was warm, comfortable, well-lit and acoustically sound, you might say.  A Prudent person contemplating the building, the orchestra, their instruments and the mesmerizing, beautiful sounds of the concert, is drawn to appreciate the scope of history and humanity.  There were some 3,500 people in attendance… or more.

The building was mainly a structure of steel: steel girders, I-beams, braces, bolts and structural panels.  One must consider the evolution of technology from the stone age, to the bronze, to the iron age of mankind and the steady struggle to make better and better steel to facilitate the ideas of designers, builders and technologists.  Some in attendance of this beautiful concert were workers in steel, design, concrete and glass, paint, upholstery and construction.

Amidst all of our paths to this evening of joy and beauty, none had lost his or her ability to recognize the fullness of that event.  Regardless of background or attainment, 4 thousand people were able to appreciate the mastery of musical skills and instruments, indeed the mastery of a language most can only hear and not read.  The requirements of life and maturity and the often brutish tests and works required, could not dim the flames of beauty and awe each of us held somewhere deep and safe in our beings.

And we all stood to applaud our thanks to 100 artists and to say in our own ways: “Way to go, Keithy!”