The Gift of the Magi

The Gift of the Magi is a short story by the American writer O. Henry, the pen name of William Sydney Porter, first published in December 1905 in the New York Sunday World and collected the following year in his volume The Four Million. It tells of Jim and Della Young, a young married couple living in a shabby New York flat with barely enough money to get by, each possessing one prized treasure, Della's long, beautiful hair and Jim's gold pocket watch, inherited from his father and grandfather. With only a dollar and eighty-seven cents saved and Christmas approaching, Della sells her hair to a wigmaker to buy Jim a fine platinum chain worthy of his watch, while Jim, unknown to her, sells his watch to buy an expensive set of ornamental combs he has long known Della wanted for her hair; when the couple exchange gifts on Christmas Eve, each discovers that the other has sacrificed their own treasure to buy a gift now rendered useless, Jim's chain for a watch he no longer owns and Della's combs for hair she no longer has. The story's narrator closes by comparing the couple, in their foolish, self-sacrificing generosity, to the biblical magi who brought gifts to the infant Jesus, arguing that of all who give and receive gifts such as theirs are the wisest, and the story has become one of the most widely read and anthologized short stories in American literature, its twist ending a byword for ironic, loving sacrifice.