The Total Cost Of Doing The 12 Days Of Christmas? $114K

(Great Beyond)

Since nothing says Christmas like a home full of hundreds of random birds, musicians, and overactive landed gentry, it’s time to once again consider the actual cost of giving your true love every item listed in “The 12 Days of Christmas.”

Yup, PNC Financial has once again tallied up what is calls the Christmas Price Index (NOTE: turn your speakers off if you go to the site) the individual costs of each item on the list:

One Partridge in a Pear Tree: $199.99

Two Turtle Doves: $125.00

Three French Hens: $165.00

Four Calling Birds: $599.96

Five Golden Rings: $750.00

Six Geese-a-Laying: $210.00

Seven Swans-a-Swimming: $7000.00

Eight Maids-a-Milking: $58.00

Nine Ladies Dancing: $7552.84

Ten Lords-a-Leaping: $5,243.37

Eleven Pipers Piping: $2,635.20

Twelve Drummers Drumming: $2,854.50

So to just buy each item once will cost you a total of $27,393.17, a 7.7% increase from last year’s total of $25,431.18.

But if you actually repeat each of these items according to the seemingly interminable song, PNC says it will run you $114,651.18, more than a $7,000 uptick from the 2012 grand total of $107,300.84.

Prices remained flat year-over-year for six items on the list — the turtle doves, hens, golden rings, geese, the milking maids, and swans, — and the cost of the partridge/pear tree bundle actually dropped 2.4% since 2012. According to PNC, this decrease was due to a drop in the price of pear trees during the year.

But three gifts experienced double-digit price increases. Those lords-a-leaping jumped up a percentage point for each of the 10 men in the group, the apparent huge demand for calling birds sent their price skyrocketing by 15.4%, and the dancing ladies raised their fees by a whopping 20%.

Interestingly enough — and perhaps fitting with the song’s old-timey groove — PNC says it would actually cost you more to order many of these items online because of the shipping costs involved. Just buying all the listed items once will cost you $39,762.61, about $12K more than if you’d just gone out to your local milkmaid/bird/gentry/musician/tree shop.

And of course, what story about the 12 Days of Christmas would be complete without a visit from Bob & Doug McKenzie?

by Chris Morran via Consumerist