Christmas Stories: 'The Gift of the Magi'

This Christmas, maybe you'll receive the iPod you've wanted for so long. Or the big-screen TV you've been eyeing. Or the state-of-the-art digital camera that snaps the perfect picture. Well, as O. Henry conveys in his timeless Christmas story "The Gift of the Magi," possessions such as these don't mean anything if you're still lacking a gift that is much more important: love. O. Henry's tale is about a husband and wife who go to great lengths to find the perfect Christmas gift for each other. In the process, they learn that the best presents don't come in wrapped boxes. It's a story that reminds us of what we should cherish most during the Christmas season.

"The Gift of the Magi"

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty-seven cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one, two, and three at a time by negotiating with the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with embarrassment. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.

There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. She was beginning to believe that life was made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.

While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week.

In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric doorbell from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also there was a card bearing the name "Mr. James Dillingham Young."

The "Dillingham" had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when the income was shrunk to $20, though, they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming "D." But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was called "Jim" and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Della. Which is all very good.

Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fence in a gray backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present.

She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week does not go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him, something fine and rare and sterling, something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim.

There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pier-glass in an $8 flat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of mirrored strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della, being slender, had mastered the art.

Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. Her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.

Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim's gold watch that had been his father's and his grandfather's. The other was Della's hair. Had the queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the air shaft, Della would have let her hair hang out the window to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty's jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from envy.

So now Della's beautiful hair fell about her, rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her waist and made itself almost a garment for her. And then she did it up again nervously and quickly.

On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out the door and down the stairs to the street.

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Christmas Stories: 'The Gift of the Magi,' Part II

Here's the next part of "The Gift of the Magi":

Where she stopped the sign read: "Madame Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds." One flight up Della ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame Sofronie was large, chilly, and too white. She hardly looked the "Sofronie."

"Will you buy my hair?" asked Della.

"I buy hair," said Madame. "Take yer hat off and let's have a sight at the looks of it."

Down rippled the brown cascade.

"Twenty dollars," said Madame, lifting the mass with a practiced hand.

"Give it to me quick," said Della.

The next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Della was ransacking the stores for Jim's present.

She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain, simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone.

As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be Jim's. It was like him. Quietness and value, the description applied to both. Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home with the eighty-seven cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a chain.

When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love.

Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.

"If Jim doesn't kill me," she said to herself, "before he takes a second look at me, he'll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do? Oh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty-seven cents?"

At seven o'clock the coffee was made and the frying pan was sitting on the back of the stove. It was hot and ready to cook the pork chops that Della had bought the night before.

Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. She waited impatiently for him to come home.

Then Della heard his step on the stairs way down on the first flight. Quickly, she stood up and fixed her hair one last time. Then she turned white for just a moment. Della had a habit of saying little silent prayers about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered, "Please God, make him think I am still pretty. Make him love me just the same."

The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two and already burdened with a family!

He needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves.

"Hello, dear," Jim said. Then he looked up at Della. Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della as she stood in front of the pier-glass.

Della tried to smile, until she looked into his eyes. There was an expression in them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar expression on his face.

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Christmas Stories: 'The Gift of the Magi' Part III

Here's the final part of "The Gift of the Magi":

Della finally moved and went for him. "Jim, darling," she cried, "please don't look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and sold because I could not have lived through Christmas without giving you a real present. And I certainly didn't have enough money saved."

Della held Jim's hands and looked into his eyes. "It will grow out again," she said. "You won't mind, will you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Please say 'Merry Christmas!' Jim, and let's be happy. You don't know what a beautiful, nice gift I have for you."

"You've cut off your hair?" asked Jim, as if he had not arrived at that patent fact yet even after the hardest mental labor.

Della held his hand tighter still, warming it with her own. "Cut it off and sold it," said Della. "Don't you like me just as well, anyhow? I'm me without my hair. Don't you think so?"

Jim looked about the room curiously. "You say your hair is gone?" he said, with an air almost of idiocy.

"You needn't look for it," said Della. "It's sold, I tell you, sold and gone, too. It's Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered," she went on with sudden serious sweetness, "but nobody could ever count my love for you."

Della waited for Jim to speak then. He took off his coat without speaking and then turned back to Della.

Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He grabbed Della in his arms.

For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a year, what is the difference?

A mathematician would give you the wrong answer. The Magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.

Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table. "Do not make a mistake, Dell, about me," he said. "I don't think there is anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less. But if you will unwrap that small package you may see why you had me going a while at first."

White, nimble fingers tore at the string and paper. Della let out an ecstatic scream of joy. Then her voice turned to hysterical tears and wails as she examined the contents of the box.

For there lay "the combs," the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshiped long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell, with jeweled rims, just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair. They were very expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should have adorned the coveted adornments were gone.

Jim summoned up all of his comforting powers and said, "I can take the combs back and get the money."

But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile and say, "My hair grows so fast, Jim!"

And then Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, "Oh, oh!" She ran to the table and opened the box for Jim.

Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to flash with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.

"Isn't it a dandy, Jim?" Della asked. "I hunted all over town to find it. You'll have to look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how it looks on it."

Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and smiled.

"Dell," said Jim, "let's put our Christmas presents away and keep them a while. They're too nice to use just yet. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs. And now suppose we get dinner ready."

The Magi, as you know, were wise men who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, they are wisest. They are the Magi.