By Tom Dodge, KERA 90.1 Commentator
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kera/local-kera-493786.mp3
Dallas, TX –
"The Gift of the Magi" was first published a hundred years ago, on December 10th, 1905. It was the feature story in the magazine section of the New York "World" under its original title, "Gifts of the Magi, O. Henry's Christmas Story."
In the story Della and Jim Young are members of the city's working poor in the first decade of the twentieth century. They live in an eight-dollar-a-month room in Greenwich Village. It is Christmas and Della has but a dollar and 87 cents. In those days, cash money was necessary for purchasing gifts so, for the poor, Christmas was a time of personal sacrifice. Della loves her ankle-length hair, as Jim does. But she loves him more, so she sells it for twenty dollars and buys him a watch fob for his cherished gold watch.
He is much more shocked when he sees her bobbed hair than she expected. When he presents her gift, she learns why. He has sold his watch to buy her the decorative combs she had admired in a Broadway store window.
It would be story number 52 that O. Henry had written for the "World" that year at one hundred dollars each. The stated purpose of the paper, owned by Joseph Pulitzer, was to fight for the people against government and corporate abuses. O. Henry was not an overt crusader but his fiction nevertheless brought attention to impoverished boarding house residents like Della and Jim, exploited shop girls who moonlighted their feminine wares on Manhattan streets, and desperate men intentionally breaking into jail to get shelter from the cold. So O. Henry was a kind of investigative reporter, too, acquiring his research during his nightly wanderings into the streets of Manhattan's lower West Side.
It would appear on the first page of the ad-filled edition in its entirety and in color. It would run early, on December tenth, to allow time for shoppers to come up with the cash for their purchases. Personal accounts of the story's origin vary but the most likely version is the one in which O. Henry, whose contract had been canceled by a new managing editor, simply had intended not to write the final story of his contract. When the delivery boy said he was afraid to return without it O. Henry sat down and wrote it in two hours.
"There," he reportedly said, handing the story to the boy, "that ought to fill the space."
O. Henry's real name was William Sidney Porter. He came to Texas in 1882 where he worked as a cowboy, a pharmacist, a newspaper columnist, and a bank teller. In 1897 he went to prison for embezzlement of an Austin bank. Also in that year his wife, Athol, died of tuberculosis and his daughter went to live with her grandparents. In prison he wrote and sold fourteen stories under various pen names. After his release, in 1901, he began a new life in a new century with a new name as one of New York's most popular writers. Before O. Henry's death in 1910 he had written over 250 stories.
During the hundred years since he wrote "The Gift of the Magi, O. Henry's literary fame has faded but this story hasn't. It has endured because, to enough of us, it represents the essence of Christian love and sacrifice and stands as a monument in stark contrast to this era's shameful displays of greed and commercial frenzy.
Tom Dodge is a writer from Midlothian.
If you have opinions or rebuttals about this commentary, call (214) 740-9338 or email us