The Gift of the Magi

I’m already subjecting you to the Christmas bears (and don’t worry Suzanne, there are more to come!) so how about another family tradition?

I wrap 24 of our favorite Christmas books and the kids get to open one every day as a sort of advent calendar and we read it.

Last night Mark opened The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry. (Adam read it to the kids…I was busy eating pie.)


I love The Gift of the Magi. It always makes me a little teary (blame my mom…and my dad. I didn’t have a chance but to inherit the cry easily gene). It also reminds me of my mom and dad.

My dad taught himself to be a bit and spur maker and my mom kept body and soul together for 6 children. There were some lean years. My mom would call that an enormous understatement but as children we were always shielded from any lack so the lean years were just viewed as casual observers.

One of those lean year Christmases, my mom got the idea to have one of my dad’s saddle maker friends make him some leather spur straps. My dad had made a beautiful pair of spurs for himself. They hung on his high-heeled boots from a nail in his shop. The boots had seen better days, but those spurs were something…

My mom was Della. She scrimped and saved and although didn’t cut her hair (it was already short) she came up with the money to purchase the spur straps. I remember being with her in Elko that day when she picked them up. They were worthy of The Spurs.

On Christmas morning I snapped out of my own gift reverie to watch my dad open the spur straps. He of course loved them.

Then he gave my mom her gift. It was a Bosch bread mixer. My mom was overwhelmed and joyful. But then it hit her. She is an accountant and she knew there was not the money for a Bosch bread mixer. How had my dad afforded to buy it? How did he buy it without her knowledge?

It turned out my dad was Jim. He said, simply, “I sold the spurs.”

The magi, as you know, were wise men--wonderfully wise men--who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. 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. O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.