Music Welcome to snoozecast, the podcast designed to help you fall asleep. Find us on snoozecast.com and follow us on Instagram at snoozecast to find behind the scenes content. If you enjoy our show, please write a review on the Apple Podcasts app. Also, share us with a friend. Please know that we read and appreciate every single review. Here's a recent review we loved. The subject line is Great Help and it goes. Recently found this podcast and loving it. The story content and format are very effective tools when relaxation alludes. I appreciate the calm tones and clear, slow, and non-seation. Thank you Sleepy and Oregon for writing a review and we're so glad to help you find relaxation at bedtime. If you'd like to get an email once a week with upcoming sleep stories and other news, subscribe to the snooze letter at snoozecast.com. This episode is brought to you by our Patreon supporters and by Stockings Hung with Care. Tonight we'll read The Gift of the Magi, a short story by O'Henry, followed by the poem The Night Before Christmas, published in 1905. This O'Henry's story tells 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.

The night before Christmas is formally titled, a visit from St. Nicholas and written by Clement

Clark Moore, anonymously published in 1844. Let's get cozy. Close your eyes. Relax your body into the softness of your bed. Now take a few deep breaths. the gift of the magi $1.87 That was all. And 60 cents of it was in pennies. Penny 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 Dell accounted it, $1.87, 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 begger 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 thereon too, 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. 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, 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. He stood by the window and looked outully, at a grey cat walking a grey fence in a grey 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. $20 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 peer glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pure glass in an eight-dollar 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 20 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 fathers and his grandfathers.

The other was Delah's hair. Had the queen of Shiba lived in the flat across the air shaft, Delah would have let her Her hair, hanging out the window some someday 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, Delas' beautiful hair fell about her, blippling 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. One went her old brown jacket.

On went her old brown jacket. On whent 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, Madame Sofronny, Hare Goods of all kinds. One flight up, Delarane, and collected herself, panting, Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the sofrony. Will you buy my hair? As Della, I buy hair, said Madame, take your hat off, Let's have a sight of the looks of it Down rippled the brown cascade $20 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 Rosie 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 chased in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone, and not by ornamentation, all good things should do. It was even worthy of the watch. As soon as she saw it, she knew that it must be gyms. 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 slide on account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a chain. And Ellaella 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 40 minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a true-in-school boy. 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 Kony Island chorus girl. What could I do? Oh, what could I do with a dollar in 87 cents? At seven 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 of saying a little silent prayer about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered, Please God, make him think I'm still pretty. The door opened, and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, who was only 22, 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 a quail. His eyes were fixed

upon Della, and there was an expression in them that she could not read and to terrify Later, it was not anger nor, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her, fixantly, with that peculiar expression on his face. Della wriggled off the table and went for him. Jim darling, she cried. He can't look at me that way. I hit 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. Same Merry Christmas, Jim. 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. As 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 by the hairs on my head were numbered. She went on with sudden serious sweetness, but nobody could ever count my love for you. I put put the chops on Jim? Out of his trance, Jim seemed quickly to wake. He unfolded his dela. For ten seconds, let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction. $8 a week or a million a year, what's 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 through it upon the table.

Don't make any mistake, Dell.

He's... 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.

It could make me like my girl any less.

But if you'll unwrap that package,

you may see why you had me go in there a while at first.

White fingers and nimble, tore at the string in paper, and then an ecstatic scream of joy, scream of joy, and then alas, a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and whales, necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the Lord of the flat. for their lay the combs, the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshiped long in a Broadway window, beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell, with jeweled rimims, 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 treases that should have adorned the coveted ornaments were gone.

But she hooked them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile and

...