The Gift of the Magi

Tomorrow is Christmas in New York City, and Della Young has exactly one dollar and eighty-seven cents to her name. Sixty cents of it is in pennies, saved one by one through haggling with the butcher and the grocer. Her husband, James, has recently seen his wages cut to twenty dollars a week, leaving them in an eight-dollar furnished flat with a broken doorbell and an empty mailbox. Yet Della is determined to buy him a present.

To afford a gift worthy of James, Della realizes she must part with the only thing of value she owns: her long hair. Unknown to her, James faces a similar dilemma, weighing the worth of his heirloom gold pocket watch against the cost of a gift for his wife.

Originally published in the 1906 collection The Four Million, O. Henry's narrative established a template for the modern holiday story. Its mechanics of situational irony and mutual sacrifice became a permanent fixture in American literature.