True love in 12 days for 688,000 baht
BREAKING NEWS
True love in 12 days for 688,000 baht
By Anne K Walters, dpa
Washington (dpa) - If your wish list includes a partridge in a pear tree, five gold rings and 12 drummers drumming, your true love will have to dig deep into his pocket this Christmas.
The gifts from the popular Christmas song, The 12 Days of Christmas, will set you back $18,920 this holiday season - 688,310 baht at this morning's conversion rate.
That is 3.1 per cent more than last year under the tongue-in-cheek Christmas Price Index compiled each year by PNC bank.
For 22 years, the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based institution has calculated the cost of all the birds, trees, dancers, and musicians - beginning in 1984 when your true love would have shelled out around $12,400.
"We as Americans clearly focus on the holiday season as a big part of our spending index and that is somewhat reflected in our index," Jeff Kleintop, chief investment strategist for PNC Wealth Management, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa in a telephone interview.
Still, most Americans won't even get close to the cost of all the items in the song when they hit the shopping malls. Economic observers predict that the average American will spend around $800 this season.
Kleintop has watched prices go up and down for the song's unusual gifts. This year he was most impressed by the increase for the partridge in a pear tree (up 44 per cent from last year to $145) as the cost for ornamental trees soared on high demand from developers. The bird itself though did not see much of a rise, as fears about avian flu have subsided.
Gold rings, which one would expect to be a pricey high-end item, stayed flat at $325. Despite significantly higher gold prices, jewellers appeared not be charging more, Kleintop said.
The gifts in the song are certainly impractical.
"No one has ever called us to say 'where can I buy seven swans a swimming?'"
But the index does stay fairly steady with the general rate of inflation, and reflects larger trends in the labour market, he said.
This year the price of skilled labour continued to rise as nine ladies dancing, 10 lords a-leaping, 11 pipers piping and 12 drummers drumming saw increases of up to 4 per cent, while the eight unskilled maids a-milking did not see an increase in their pay.
Your true love could spend even more on the gifts, if he's generous and follows the song by repeating each previous day's gifts, for a total cost of $72,608 - 2,641,480 baht.
Compiling the prices for such unusual gifts isn't easy. Analysts contact the Philadelphia Dance Company to figure out how much dancers get paid for a performance ($4,759 for nine ladies dancing) and call the Cincinnati Zoo for the price of exotic birds (seven swans a-swimming come in around $4,200).
But one thing is easy to figure out, the mess such a gift would cause.
"You'd really need a good maid service after all those French hens and geese," Kleintop said.
The 12 Days of Christmas Price Index can be found online at PNC — The True Cost of the 12 Days of Christmas...
