In their yearly display of price change and how it affects holiday prices, PNC has again released their Christmas Price Index. This interactive feature allows users to track the price changes of each subject of the popular Christmas carol, "The Twelve Days of Christmas," beginning with a partridge in a pear tree, with the price of the tree determined by a local Philadelphia nursery and the partridge by the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Gardens. Other prices can be found here.
This year the cost of Christmas is $25,431.18, up 4.8% since 2011's score of 24,263.18. This is the cost to purchase each of the 78 items in "The Twelve Days of Christmas," with the least expensive being the eight maids-a-milking, as determined by US minimum wage law, which hasn't changed since 2009. The most expensive item on the list (topping ten lords-a-leaping), are the seven swans-a-swimming at $7,000, up 11.1% from their 2011 price of $6,300.
However, indices like these should be taken with a grain of coal; criticism of PNC's index can be found here. According to the critics, Christmas' price when adjusted for inflation are not as high as perceived. Additionally, what is the price of the cow for the maids-a-milking, how long are the dancers dancing for, and where are you going to find real lords to leap (The index measures the going rate for male ballet dancers)? Ultimately, this lighthearted game of Christmasnomics isn't without its Scrooges, but it shows relative economic change; swans are up, maids unchanged.
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