How was Jim able to afford them? Suddenly, she remembers Jim's present. She had seen them in a shop before, but they were so expensive. He gives her the present wrapped in paper and Della unwraps it to see that Jim had bought her a set of beautiful combs for her hair. The reason he is shocked to see her without her long hair is that he also wanted to get a nice Christmas present for Della. Jim tells her not to worry and that nothing can change his love for her. She explains to Jim how she sold her hair to buy himĪ nice Christmas present. He stares at her in a strange way and it scares her. When Jim comes home, he does look shocked when he sees Della with short hair. She goes home and prepares Jim's dinner and waits for him to come home, a little bit worried that Jim will be shocked when he sees her with all her beautiful hair cut off. The chain costs $21, so she now has enough money. So, she decides to sell her hair to a woman who makes wigs and other hair articles. But she really wants to buy that gold chain for Jim's watch. And Della? Della is most proud of her beautiful long hair. They do not have much to be proud or happy about, but Jim is very proud of that watch. After rent and groceries, the couple hardly have any money left.Ĭhristmas is only a day away and, for a Christmas present, Della wants to buy Jim a gold watch chain for his gold watch. They are quite poor and recently Jim has had his salary cut back to only $20 a week from the $30 a week he used to make. A pity.Jim and Della are a husband and wife living in a rented room in New York. Over all, it's a good effort, and the casting and direction are good, but the script needs a bit of work and focus, making this simply watchable. Sokoloff continues as earnest throughout, Webber turns into an inconsiderate boor by the time the story is heading towards the lap. But the story telling soon gets lost in a maze of secondary characters who are used to fill up the time, and while Ms. And the leads, Marla Sokoloff and Mark Webber, are handsome and loving. But the poor we always have with us, so this story is about a husband who wants to buy a good lens for his wife's beloved heirloom camera while she wants to buy an original steering wheel for the vintage car he is restoring - these stand in for the original gifts. This TV movie makes a fair try at filling up the spaces by updating the story - modern urban women no longer sell their hair to wig makers, and certainly not to buy fobs for their husbands' pocket watches, since men mostly don't use pocket watches these days. Henry specialized in short stories with 'snapper' endings - usually sardonic jokes on their protagonists.

It is also much harder to translate to a screen feature, since O. Henry's 'The Gift of the Magi' is one of the two best-known secular Christmas stories - the other is, of course, Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol'.

The gift of magi