by Misha Thompson

It is COLD. For the relatively mild Pacific Northwest, when the newspaper says it’s not getting above freezing today, or maybe for a couple days, that is cold! The air has been sparkling with the crisp, clear, blue-tinged light that comes with chilly air. The lumbering UPS trucks have been making more trips up and down our street than normal, the kids have been curled up with bowls of popcorn watching Frosty the Snowman and White Christmas and all the cinnamon candles and fireplace coziness is kicking into high gear!

Someone mentioned over the weekend that Christmas was nineteen days away and my jaw dropped. Today it’s only sixteen days away! I am home, in p.j.’s, sick. And what makes that unusual is no-one else is sick, too. And just the mama being under the weather, when everyone else is in high Christmas gear, is a little bit tricky. Cookies aren’t getting baked, laundry is barely getting done and chicken noodle soup is about all that is getting made from scratch around here.

But yesterday, with this week’s Advent theme being Love, I had the true fun of being the first person ever to curl up on the couch and read my kids the famous story O. Henry wrote just for this time of year.

” ‘The Gift of the Magi’, as this site explains, is about a young couple who are short of money but desperately want to buy each other Christmas gifts. Unbeknownst to Jim, Della sells her most valuable possession, her beautiful hair [my daughter gasped!], in order to buy a platinum fob chain for Jim’s watch; while unbeknownst to Della, Jim sells his own most valuable possession, his watch, to buy jeweled combs for Della’s hair ["Did he know?!" my son was shocked.] The essential premise of this story has been copied, re-worked, parodied, and otherwise re-told countless times in the century since it was written.”

But my kids had never heard it before, and when I got to the part at the end where O. Henry explains the famous title I teared up. I had tears not just for the sentimentality I have in spades, or for the romance of the moment of introducing my kids to beautiful stories (I love that kind of stuff!), but I got very emotional thinking of how many families across the US were experiencing that day by day countdown and panic of not knowing if they will have gifts under the tree.

I know there are many people wondering, when money is tight and jobs are in flux, how to still make a Christmas magical for their kids. This week I was reminded again that generosity is the most magical gift out there. It multiplies and proliferates and keeps on creating smiles as it passes from hand to hand and intention to heart.

We are still voting daily – all of us in our family that have email addresses, even grandparents and family all over the world! – hoping very much that we will be able to give a $10,000 check to families who need it most - women and children at a local homeless shelter. We would love it if you would vote with us. We are also helping our kids pick a few people of their choice to give some money to, anonymously, for Christmas. Even just a small amount creates a huge measure of joy. We want them to experience the delight of O. Henry’s words, too. 

 “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 those two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. they are the magi.”

~ O. Henry

To vote you can go here.

To read O. Henry’s short story, The Gift of The Magi, you can go here.

{image via wikicommons}