"The Greatest Gift" is a 1943 short story written by Philip Van Doren Stern, loosely based on the Charles Dickens 1843 novella A Christmas Carol, which became the basis for the film It's a Wonderful Life (1946).

As he stands on a bridge on Christmas Eve, he is approached by a strange, unpleasantly dressed but well-mannered man with a bag.

The man tells George he should take the bag with him and pretend to be a door-to-door brush salesman if anyone addresses him.

[1] Unable to find a publisher, he sent the 200 copies he had printed as a 21-page booklet[2] to friends as Christmas presents in December 1943.

[1] The story came to the attention of RKO Pictures producer David Hempstead, who showed it to actor Cary Grant.

At the suggestion of RKO studio chief Charles Koerner, Frank Capra read The Greatest Gift and immediately saw its film potential.

[6] Capra, along with writers Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, with Jo Swerling, Michael Wilson, and Dorothy Parker brought in to "polish" the script,[7] turned the story and fragments from the three scripts into a screenplay that Capra renamed It's a Wonderful Life.

[8] Final screenplay credit went to Goodrich, Hackett and Capra, with "additional scenes" by Jo Swerling.