“ONE DOLLAR AND EIGHTY-SEVEN CENTS. That was all. She had to put it aside, one cent and then another and then another, in her careful buying of meat and other food. Della counted it three times. Della counted it again. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.”
And so begins The Gift of the Magi, a short story written by O. Henry in 1905. The story is a well-known allegory about Della and Jim, a young married couple (Jim is 22!) who have fallen upon hard times and move into an $8 a week furnished room. Now it’s Christmas and despite Della’s scrimping, she has no money to buy her husband a gift. Della decides to sell her long, luscious locks of hair for $20. With this money, she purchases a fancy gold chain to go with Jim’s prized gold watch, given to him by his father.
Jim is stunned when he walks in the door that night and sees Della’s cropped hair. Seeing the look on his face, she asks “Don’t you like me now?” and tells him she sold her hair to buy him a gift. Jim wraps her in his arms, then hands her a package from his jacket pocket. “Nothing like a haircut could make me love you any less. But if you’ll open that, you’ll know what I felt when I came in.”
Della opens the wrapped paper package tied with string; in it is a set of beautifully ornate combs—the Combs—she has so long admired in the store window. She’s delighted! She then hands her gift to Jim, excited as to how it will “look against your gold watch”. Jim is quiet, then tells her he sold his beloved gold watch to buy the Combs for her hair.
The couple decide to put the gifts away for now, and sit down to dinner. The sacrifices each made for the other lends an ironic twist to the message: genuine love is putting others before ourselves.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The story parallels the gifts brought by the Magi to the Christ child in Bethlehem. But the offerings delivered by the wisemen who followed the star were material, tactile and tangible. They were presents in the truest sense of the word, and bore a special symbolism and interpretation for that time in history. Gold was a most precious metal, frankincense an expensive and fragrant perfume, and myrrh a special extract used for embalming or as an analgesic.
But the gifts Della and Jim gave each other — these were gifts of the heart – of sacrifice, of relinquishment, of genuine selflessness. O. Henry said of the two: “of all who give gifts, these two were the most wise. Of all who give and receive gifts, they are the most wise. Everywhere they are the wise ones. They are the MAGI. “
What gifts will you bring to those you love most today?
Will it require a personal and selfless sacrifice?
Will you make a difference to that person who desperately needs to have a difference made?
Use that little bit of magic inside you to turn someone’s world around today.
Listen.
Compromise.
Forgive.
You’ll be a better person for having done it.
Merry Christmas!
Suzette
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