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Eight dollars a week or a million a year--what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer.

Near the story’s climax, the narrator breaks from third person point-of-view to second person point-of-view to speak directly to the audience. Jim is beginning to process that Della has cut her hair to buy him a gift, and it is unclear if he is upset or happy yet. This annotation provides the narrator’s opinion that only a person thinking with cold, unfeeling logic would conclude that money matters more than love. This implies that logic is not always the wisest way to interpret a situation, but that emotions matter as well. Jim’s positive response to Della’s haircut reinforces the point the narrator makes that emotions are just as important a factor as logic.

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. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.

The narrator’s final lines of the story address the audience directly to deliver its moral. The narrator claims that though Jim and Della may be perceived as foolish, they are actually the wisest of gift givers. The narrator further claims that anyone who gives a gift with the intention of love behind it is a wise gift giver. The last line directly compares them the magi, illustrating how strongly the narrator feels about this. The lesson is that love is the greatest gift of all. The lesson is presented sanctimoniously and uncritically, leaving the true moral open to interpretation.

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