Gift of the Magi
The parable of a young husband and wife and how they deal with the challenge of buying secret Christmas gifts for each other with very little money, where they each sell items they own (watch and hair) to buy gifts for the other that, as it turns out in a twist ending, are no longer useful to the other (a watch chain a combs, respectively), an example of comic irony.
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Origin
A short story by O. Henry (pen name of William Sydney Porter, 1862–1910), first published on December 10, 1905, in the New York Sunday World magazine. Legend holds that Porter wrote it in two feverish hours when a collector came for his contribution to the paper's Christmas edition. The title alludes to the biblical Magi, the original gift-givers.
Updated February 22, 2026