With inflation very much in the headlines, it should come as no surprise that true love costs a lot more this year.
And by “true love,” we mean the cost of the items recounted in that holiday classic, “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” at least as tabulated in PNC's 39th annual Christmas Price Index®. Perhaps it’s also no surprise that that index was up 10.5% this year, the third highest year-over-year increase in the index's history.
As for that total — well, it’s said that it would cost a record $45,523.27 to buy those 12 perfect gifts this year. A big cost driver this year is the cost of some birds in the index; while the Partridge, Calling Birds and Swans saw no flight in price, the cost of others, including Turtle Doves, French Hens and Geese, flew up 20.1%. Services are also higher, contributing significantly to the overall increase (performers were up 14.5%, though those 8 maids-a-milking haven’t seen a pay bump in a decade)—oh, and a key driver of the spike in the pear tree is the cost of fertilizer, which saw growth of 28.4%. Another big contributor — gold ring prices are up a whopping 39% from 2021.
Oh — and if you bought all the items in all the verses — those 364 gifts will cost $197,071.09, which means that spreading cheer in 2022 costs 9.8% more than it did a year ago.
On the other hand, just two years ago, the picture was quite different. Considering the impact of social distancing, PNC calculated the 2020 price tag for the PNC Christmas Price Index at just $16,168.10 — and that turned out to be a considerable decrease — $22,825.45 or -58.5% over the prior year’s cost — but not for a good reason.
Started in 1984 by a PNC predecessor bank in Philadelphia, the PNC CPI was initially developed to include in holiday messages to clients. Now, it is intended to educate consumers while spreading some holiday joy and highlighting market changes over time.
You can check them all out in detail at https://www.pncchristmaspriceindex.com/en/about-pnc/topics/pnc-christmas-price-index.html#gifts
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