Ever wonder how much it would cost to give your loved ones all of the gifts mentioned in the 12 days of Christmas? Well, it’s a little pricey for 12 drummers drumming, 11 pipers piping, 10 lords-a-leaping, 9 ladies dancing, 8 maids-a-milking, 7 swans-a-swimming, 6 geese-a-laying, 5 golden rings, 4 turtle doves, 3 french hens, 2 turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree. Find out exactly how much everything costs after the jump!
Giving the holiday presents of a French hen, a milking maid, a leaping lord or even a partridge in a pear tree is rather unlikely in this day and age. But the gifts from the favorite holiday carol “The 12 Days of Christmas†are lighthearted clues to how the economy is faring.
Over all, prices are fairly stable and not rising precipitously for even the quirkier gifts, according to the Christmas Price Index released for the 28th year by PNC Wealth Management, part of the PNC Financial Services Group. On the down side, the price tag for the eye-popping 364 items and services in each of the song’s verses breaks $100,000 for the first time this year.
Bestowing the gifts would cost 3.5 percent more than it did last year. The price, which reflects weaker consumer demand in a fragile economy, mirrors the federal government’s Consumer Price Index, which increased 3.4 percent this year for the far more pedestrian items used by today’s consumer. The latest figures for the year were released by the Department of Labor last week.
While even the most determined would find it daunting to gather a round of the 12 different gifts, prices for some staple items in the song’s elaborate verses have fallen, perhaps offering a little consolation.
Gold, for example — as in the five golden rings — has fallen in price. Those rings (fairly lightweight ones, one would think) come to $645, down from $649.95 last year. Even though gold commodities, an investor haven, have been hovering at record highs recently, the demand for gold at retail has been weakening.
“Our five golden rings dropped by 0.8 percent this year,†said James P. Dunigan, PNC Wealth Management’s managing executive of investments.
But Mr. Dunigan notes that the index research is not scientific — prices are gathered from state and local sources. The National Jeweler, a trade publication that tracks jewelry sales, found in November that some jewelers were complaining that shoppers had “sticker shock†when looking for gold gifts or wedding rings.
Unsurprisingly, labor costs remained fairly flat. The nine ladies dancing, for example, remained static, at $6,294, the same as last year, according to figures from Philadanco, a dance company in Philadelphia. The 11 pipers piping, at a price of $2,427.60, and 12 drummers drumming, for $2,629.90, were up modestly, about 3 percent. The only unskilled laborers in the verses are the eight maids-a-milking, who are calculated as earning the $7.25 minimum hourly wage. That wage did not rise in 2011 for the second straight year, so their cost stayed the same.
The price tag for one round of gifts is $24,263.18 this year, up $823.80 from last year. Repeating the gifts totaled slightly more than $101,000, a gain of 4.4 percent, also close to the federal price index.
“Typically we see parallels between our index and the federal government’s,†Mr. Dunigan said, “which was not the case last year. Still, we are talking about a small basket of goods and services here compared to the Consumer Price Index.â€
And like the federal government’s index, the PNC index also measures a core index that excludes the swans, a bird that has a fluctuating price history because of varying supply and demand. This year the core index rose only 0.7 percent. That compares with the core Consumer Price Index which, according to federal figures, rose 2.2 percent this year, and excludes volatile food and energy costs.
The price for the swans rose by 12.5 percent, almost double last year’s rise of 6.7 percent, to $6,300. Aside from the swans, bird prices were more moderate this year as demand decreased. The cost and availability of bird feed for the two turtle doves pushed their prices up by 25 percent (still less than the 78.6 percent rise in 2010) to $125, but the three French hens remained the same, at $150.
The partridge rose 14.2 percent, to $15, and the pear tree jumped 13.3 percent, to $169. The four calling birds dropped 13.3 percent, to almost $520. Figures for the fowl came from the National Aviary in Pittsburgh.
Shopping online offered only convenience. It would cost $39,860 to buy the 12 different presents, about 16.1 percent more than last year and nearly $16,000 more than this year’s traditional index. All 364 gifts totaled $174,382 on the Internet, as shipping costs “more than overcame any convenience factor of shopping online,†Mr. Dunigan said.
As the index has emerged as a popular teaching tool for students, PNC comes up with new digital presentations each year. This year, its Web site, at pncchristmaspriceindex.com, has an interactive train journey through a winter setting. Riders stop at each site to collect gifts, and a calculator adds it up.
