Gift Of The Magi

The best lesson on the meaning of Christmas is the O'Henry classic short story 'The Gift of the Magi'. Today I will summarize it in the spirit of the Christmas season and as a reminder of what Christmas should be about. The story is simple but speaks volumes about happiness, about Christmas and about meaning in life itself.

In Biblical context the magi were wise men who brought gifts to baby Jesus in the manger, thus inventing the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise magi their gifts were the best ones. And so I go to my version of the story O' Henry wrote about the Christmas gift. Bear with me. It will be short and follows below...

A man and woman very much in love because they were together, relatively poor, approached Christmas time. Though they had no children and little money, they were happy because they were together, only regretting that this Christmas they were too poor to buy each other a gift. Each had only one possession that they cherished above any other material thing, he a beautiful gold watch left to him by his father and she her long golden cascading hair. It came to be the day before Christmas and they had no money with which to buy each other a gift.

But on his way to work the man realized there as a way he could buy his wife a wonderful present, and she too, during the Christmas Eve day, discovered a way to buy her husband a fine gift. That Christmas Eve night the man came home with his gift tucked under his arm, and she too had wrapped her present for him. They rushed to embrace and gasped as they gazed at each other, tears dribbling to the cheek of both as they looked into each other's eyes. Through bittersweet tears they exchanged gifts. The man opened his. It was a beautiful gold fob for his watch. But he no longer had the watch. He had sold it to buy her a present, a beautiful sparkling gold comb for her hair. But she couldn't use it. She had cut her hair and sold it to a wig maker to pay for the fob she had just presented to her husband.

The looked at each other and at the presents and smiled. They realized at once that in spite of it all, they had given to each other the greatest gift of all- true love.