The Gift of the Magi

If ever there was a story that portrayed the spirit of Christmas it is The Gift of the Magi, William Sidney Porter’s short story about a poor and very young couple who had little more than their love to give each other. Still, each managed to buy and give a sacrificial gift and that is the theme of the story.

The nom de plum of William S. Porter was O. Henry, and using it for reasons I’ll shortly give, he perfected the genre of short stories. Perhaps his ability to tell a poignant tale derived from a life that was itself filled with poignancy. Born near Greensboro North Carolina in the second year of the Civil War, Porter received no formal education except what he got from an aunt who taught at a local country school along with access to her books. As a young man, he moved to Texas for his health in the 1880s where he held odd jobs herding sheep and drawing survey maps before settling in Austin to become a teller for the First National Bank of Austin.

Though Porter had left the bank to dabble in writing, a shortage of bank funds was traced back to the time of his employment with First National. He had married by then and had a small daughter. It’s unlikely that Porter was actually guilty of embezzlement because the bank was badly managed, but rather than confront the charges, he left his sickly wife and daughter and fled to New Orleans and then Honduras. His wife’s failing health forced his return and she shortly died of tuberculosis, a common killer in those years. In 1898 he was found guilty of the embezzlement charges and sentenced to five years in an Ohio prison.

During his imprisonment, Porter wrote fourteen short stories – mostly under the pseudonym O. Henry in order to hide his prison record. All were published.

As a young man in North Carolina, Porter had learned the practice of pharmacy from his uncle who was himself a pharmacist. Although he was a licensed pharmacist, Porter never practiced until he was imprisoned. Setting up shop, Porter became the prison’s pharmacist, presumably never spending time in a cell block. He was released for good behavior within three years.

Rejoining his daughter, who was then 11, Porter married his childhood sweetheart and moved to New York where he could be close to his publishers. His published oeuvre grew to 300 works and he was famous by any definition. Yet he began to drink heavily. As his work suffered, his wife left him.

Porter died in 1910 in New York City of cirrhosis and complications from diabetes. He was then penniless and only 47 years old. He is buried in Asheville North Carolina. His daughter would live only 17 more years herself and was buried next to her father.

.

O. Henry wrote The Gift of the Magi in 1906. I hope this tale of Jim and Della and their memorable Christmas blesses your Christmas …

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty- seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.

There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.

While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad.

In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name "Mr. James Dillingham Young."

The "Dillingham" had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when the income was shrunk to $20, though, they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was called "Jim" and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Della. Which is all very good.

Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fence in a gray backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn't go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling--something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim.

There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pier-glass in an $8 flat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della, being slender, had mastered the art.

Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.

Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim's gold watch that had been his father's and his grandfather's. The other was Della's hair. Had the queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della would have let her hair hang out the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty's jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from envy.

So now Della's beautiful hair fell about her rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her. And then she did it up again nervously and quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the worn red carpet.

On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out the door and down the stairs to the street.

Where she stopped the sign read: "Mne. Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds." One flight up Della ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the "Sofronie."

"Will you buy my hair?" asked Della.

"I buy hair," said Madame. "Take yer hat off and let's have a sight at the looks of it."

Down rippled the brown cascade.

"Twenty dollars," said Madame, lifting the mass with a practiced hand.

"Give it to me quick," said Della.

Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim's present.

She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentation--as all good things should do. It was even worthy of The Watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be Jim's. It was like him. Quietness and value--the description applied to both. Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home with the 87 cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a chain.

When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which is always a tremendous task, dear friends--a mammoth task.

Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.

"If Jim doesn't kill me," she said to herself, "before he takes a second look at me, he'll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do--oh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty- seven cents?"

At 7 o'clock the coffee was made and the frying-pan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook the chops.

Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she turned white for just a moment. She had a habit for saying little silent prayer about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered: "Please God, make him think I am still pretty."

The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two--and to be burdened with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves.

Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della, and there was an expression in them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar expression on his face.

Della wriggled off the table and went for him.

"Jim, darling," she cried, "don't look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and sold because I couldn't have lived through Christmas without giving you a present. It'll grow out again--you won't mind, will you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say `Merry Christmas!' Jim, and let's be happy. You don't know what a nice -- what a beautiful, nice gift I've got for you."

"You've cut off your hair?" asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not arrived at that patent fact yet even after the hardest mental labor.

"Cut it off and sold it," said Della. "Don't you like me just as well, anyhow? I'm me without my hair, ain't I?"

Jim looked about the room curiously.

"You say your hair is gone?" he said, with an air almost of idiocy.

"You needn't look for it," said Della. "It's sold, I tell you--sold and gone, too. It's Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered," she went on with sudden serious sweetness, "but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?"

Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della. For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a year--what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer. The magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.

Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table.

"Don't make any mistake, Dell," he said, "about me. I don't think there's anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less. But if you'll unwrap that package you may see why you had me going a while at first."

White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic scream of joy; and then, alas! a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the lord of the flat.

For there lay The Combs--the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell, with jeweled rims--just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should have adorned the coveted adornments were gone.

But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile and say: "My hair grows so fast, Jim!"

And them Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, "Oh, oh!"

Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to flash with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.

"Isn't it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You'll have to look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how it looks on it."

Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and smiled.

"Dell," said he, "let's put our Christmas presents away and keep 'em a while. They're too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops on."

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.

The Christmas Story – Part II

Continuing the Christmas story from last week’s posting, Matthew skips over the details of the birth of Jesus, but Luke gives this account of what happened:

While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.

We have to think about what is going on here in order to grasp the magnitude of it. Here is a 14 year old girl, maybe younger, who has never had sexual relations with a man and has just delivered a baby who, according to an angel, is the son of God. There’s no mother present to tell her what to expect during the delivery of her first child – Luke says Mary did it alone. No midwife delivered or swaddled her baby – Mary did it. Mary cut the umbilical cord – probably with her teeth. Mary cleaned her baby and disposed of the placenta. Mary wrapped the limbs of her newborn with the traditional strips of cloth and, if there was one, wrapped him in a blanket. No mention of Joseph being there. It was a lonely birth.

Then Mary placed the baby in a feed trough because there was no guest room available for them. That’s right, guest room. Translations that suggest that Mary and the baby – and probably Joseph – spent that night where they did because there was no room in an inn are translated wrong. It’s improbable that a small village like Bethlehem had an inn. More likely, the house associated with the place of the birth was that of a relative and quite possibly Mary and Joseph arrived too late to get the guest room, which other relatives who came for the census had taken. The manger or feed trough infers that the birth took place in a stable. It may have. But archeology has discovered houses in the area with caves behind them to protect and safeguard the family’s animals, so Jesus may have been born in a cave. Or it could have been a lean-to against the house that gave some protection for animals. Whatever it was, it was not clean and was intended for animals, not people, not a birth, not a newborn.

As she looked at this baby, swaddled and lying in a feed trough, we can only guess what a teenage mother would think knowing he was divine. Will he act normal? Do I nurse him? How do I raise him?

Despite his humble entry into the world, the announcement of Jesus’ birth was regal. A celestial choir of angels joined to praise God for the event. And it was fitting that the birth announcement was made to men at the absolute bottom of the Jewish social hierarchy – smelly shepherds. Shepherds were the lowest, most common unskilled peasants in first century society. Those at the top of society, the religious leaders, were not included in the divine mailing list.

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.” So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.

Why were shepherds social outcasts? When the Hebrews first journeyed to Egypt, they were nomads. Nomads aren’t farmers. They depend on livestock herds that travel with them. But the Egyptians were farmers and detested livestock herds because they ate their crops. When the brothers of Joseph came to Egypt during a famine to buy grain, he told them “Every shepherd is detestable to the Egyptians” (Gen 46:34).

During the 400 years that the Hebrews were in Egypt, much of the time as slaves, they lost their dependency on animals and became dependent on crops. Moreover, they absorbed the prejudices of the Egyptians toward shepherds. When they left Egypt to occupy the region of Canaan, they settled the new land as farmers.

Further, shepherds were not landowners; they were hirelings who lived in the fields. Some were disreputable and stole from the flock, so that people were warned not to buy wool, milk, or a kid from a shepherd on the assumption that it was stolen. But all shepherds were tarred with the same brush.

The Mishnah, Judaism’s written record of the oral law, reveals the prejudice against shepherds, referring to them as incompetent. One Mishnah excuses a Jew from rescuing a shepherd who has fallen into a pit. A shepherd was not permitted to serve as a legal witness, assuming he would lie, but if not, he was too ignorant. They could not hold a judicial office and were deprived of basic civil rights.

To such the good news of the newborn child was first revealed.

These allegedly “ignorant” herdsmen weren’t told by the angel to go look for the one announced to them, yet they did. Leaving their flocks in the field, they said to each other that they should go to Bethlehem to see the thing the Lord – not the angels – had announced. They assumed the message had come from God, which shows they were devout and they were expectant for the Messiah.

The shepherds therefore hurried into Bethlehem and found the baby swaddled and in a manger as the angel had said. No questions asked, they left and spread the word that they had been told this child was the Messiah. The people were amazed at what the shepherds told them. What amazed them? Perhaps they were amazed at the message or perhaps they were amazed that it had been revealed first to shepherds. We don’t know. But the shepherds returned – presumably to their fields, not the manger – praising God that what they were told is what they saw. They were the first eye witnesses in a society that said they weren’t qualified to be witnesses.

On the eighth day, as Jewish law required, a newborn boy was circumcised and named and then a sacrifice was offered. Because she had given birth, Mary was ritually unclean for 40 days in the post partum period. (Seeing that she was pregnant and near delivery, the owner of the house may have invited Joseph and Mary to “take the place out back” when they first arrived instead of the guest room, which would have been defiled by a birth. The unavailability of the guest room can be explained several ways. )

Jewish law dictated what must happen following birth as found in Leviticus 12:

A woman who becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son will be ceremonially unclean for seven days, just as she is unclean during her monthly period. On the eighth day the boy is to be circumcised. Then the woman must wait thirty-three days to be purified from her bleeding. She must not touch anything sacred or go to the sanctuary until the days of her purification are over … When the days of her purification for a son or daughter are over, she is to bring to the priest at the entrance to the tent of meeting a year-old lamb for a burnt offering and a young pigeon or a dove for a sin offering … But if she cannot afford a lamb, she is to bring two doves or two young pigeons, one for a burnt offering and the other for a sin offering. In this way the priest will make atonement for her, and she will be clean.

Throughout the Old Testament, a pair of turtle-doves or of young pigeons was the substitute for people too poor to provide a lamb or kid for sacrifice. The birds would have been readily available to even the poorest because they were abundant in the wild and their substitution for a lamb was evidence of extreme poverty – the state in which Joseph and Mary no doubt lived. Because turtle doves mated for life, their fidelity was considered a symbol of purity in a sacrifice intended to restore purity.

At this juncture, the story of the Nativity stops for at least a year and maybe two. Wait! What happened to the “wise men”?

The Magi did not visit the baby in the manger as commonly portrayed on Christmas cards. There were not three of them. We don’t know the names of any of them; Balthasar, Melchior, and Caspar were inventions of the 7th century. And, no, they did not ride camels.

Luke has nothing to say about these visitors from the East but Matthew does.

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”

The Magi lived in the region of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in modern day Iraq. They were Chaldeans so their ancient origin was near where Abraham lived before he was called by God – that is, their roots are from an area about halfway between Baghdad and the Persian Gulf. Magi are referred to during the captivity of the Jews in Babylon – which became Persian captivity after the Persians overthrew the Babylonians – as reported in the Old Testament books of the prophets. Daniel the prophet was appointed the chief of the Magi (Dan 2:48.) They were physicians, philosophers, scholars, and astronomers. There is evidence that they were also astrologers, soothsayers, and magicians. In fact the word “magic” come from magi.

During the Babylonian and Persian periods of captivity, these Magi came into close contact with the Jews and their religion. They would have known the Jewish prophecies like the prophecy that "there shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Scepter shall rise out of Israel" (Num 24:17), the herald of a king.

In addition to their scientific and scholarly skills they also possessed political power. Their duties included the choice and election of the king, which is one reason Herod was so disturbed when they entered his kingdom. Persia and Babylon were part of the Parthian Empire at this time, the second most powerful empire in the world – second only to Rome. The Pathians and Romans had fought many battles, and Palestine conveniently served as a buffer state between them.

If the Magi who came to honor the young child Jesus began their journey from Babylon, which is to the east in Iraq, they would have to cover a distance of 550 miles as the crow flies. It would have been impossible to take a direct route due to topography and the need to provision the number of people in their group. If they came from Persia – farther east in modern day Iran – their journey would have had to cover an even greater distance. In other words, it would have taken many months if not a year or so to get to Bethlehem once they started – whenever that happened.

Therefore, the Magi didn’t show up while Jesus was in a manger. In fact, Matthew says “On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him.” Note that when the Magi’s visited, Joseph and Mary were temporarily living in a house and Jesus was no longer referred to as a baby but as a child.

Their gifts of honor were three in number. That doesn’t mean there were three visitors. The fact that these Parthians were crossing into enemy territory – the Roman province of Palestine – surely suggests that there would have been enough men to defend themselves from the hazards of the journey and the potential conflict with the Romans. Perhaps hundreds if not thousands were in their company. The Parthians were noted for their cavalry, so it’s most probable than their company arrived on horseback.

The sudden appearance of the Magi in Jerusalem, traveling as an armed force heralded by oriental pomp and flanked by enough cavalry troops to assure safe passage through Roman territory, certainly alarmed Herod and the populace of Jerusalem. As Matthew reports it, the Magi began asking around about a new king in a country ruled by a paranoid king with a history of killing any threat to his throne.

“Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him.

The Magi were astronomers who knew the sky, and they were astrologists who interpreted signs in the heavens as indicators of events on earth. Astrology, however, was abhorrent to the Jews and no Jew was allowed to practice it. So when these star gazers showed up asking about a new king who has a star, Herod, a half-Jew, had to call the chief priests and teachers among the Jews in order to know what they were talking about.

“In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written: ‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler  who will shepherd my people Israel.’”

The Magi were only five miles from their destination.

Herod was ill and near the end of his life when these events occurred, but even so, he had to have decided that there was only room for one king is this town. Therefore,

Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared.  He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.”

We don’t know when the Magi first saw the star. Nothing compels that it appeared as soon as Jesus was born or that they came in haste upon seeing it. But we do know that when the Magi failed to return and tell Herod where they found Jesus, he ordered the killing of all baby boys who were two years old and younger. That implies that between the time of the Magi’s first star sighting and the slaughter of these children as much as two years could have passed so Jesus could have been one or two years old at the time of their visit.

The star that the Magi followed is inexplicable. In an effort to give it a natural explanation, commentators have looked at celestial history and theorized that it was a super nova, a conjunction of planets, a comet, or some other explanation. However, those who believe that Jesus was born of a virgin, announced by angels, and saved from assassination by God speaking through dreams will have no problem in accepting a miraculous star which behaved like no other star. And if it was a miracle, no record of it would be found in the astronomical record of historic celestial events.

And the Magi … why did they cross hundreds of miles of desert and mountainous terrain to bow down and worship a child in an obscure village in Palestine?

Why did Joseph and Mary, instead of returning home to Nazareth following the birth, tarry for one or two years in Bethlehem before being forced to flee to Egypt after the Magi’s visit?

Everything has a purpose with God including the visit of the Magi. We can logically assume this much. The Magi knew Jewish prophecy from their contact with the Jews and their prophets and therefore knew that a Messiah would come. The star was intended for them – no one else saw it – and it was given to the Magi as a sign from God. (There is no mention that the shepherds, who surely knew the stars, saw this one.) The Magi were Gentiles. These were also devout. When they saw the child Jesus, these powerful king-makers bowed down in worship and gave him costly gifts – a sign of submission and honor in the East.

Moreover, Luke’s account of the Nativity tells that a righteous man, Simeon, had been assured he would not die until he had seen the Messiah. When Joseph and Mary brought Jesus to the Temple to be dedicated as Jewish law required, Simeon took the baby in his arms and said,

Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you may now dismiss your servant in peace.
For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all nations:
a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel.

Just as the Messiah’s coming was announced by the angels to the shepherds as the first representatives of the Jewish nation, it was announced by the star to the Magi as the first representatives of the Gentile nations so that both might be eye witnesses that salvation had come.

That is the reason for the Magi’s visit.