Thursday December 23, 2004

MY AGENT ADVISES THAT I SELF-PUBLISH. Peggy Noonan tells us how a childhood Christmas gift (a homemade desk) made her believe in the birth of Christ ("There were some trees and bushes and a sort of wooden shanty with hay on the floor... And I thought: It's all true. It's not just a story, it's true, it really happened. This struck me like a thunderbolt"). Then she asks "readers of this space to tell of their favorite childhood Christmas gift, and what effect it had on them."

I liked getting Mouse Trap. I never played the silly board-game part, but instead built the Rube Goldberg contraption and activated it over and over again. This led me to believe that everyday objects should be put to unorthodox uses, and to invent the cat-food-lid bath drain stopper.

I liked getting Abbey Road. I played it till the grooves turned white. This led me to believe that one and one and one is three, and that, in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.

I liked getting The Gospel According to Peanuts. This led me to believe that Jesus was Snoopy, Linus was St. Paul, and Lucy was the Whore of Babylon.

But I lost my faith when Snoopy became a shill for Met Life, so I'm not going to bother sending this one to OpinionJournal.
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