'12 Days of Christmas' Gift List Shows Slight Hike in Prices
By Jim Melwert
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The annual "Christmas Price Index" is out, and this year it shows a modest increase.
The Christmas Price Index looks at what it would cost each year to buy all the items in the Christmas carol, "The 12 Days of Christmas."
Jim Dunigan of PNC Bank says all those drummers drumming and lords a-leaping and partridges in pear trees would cost $27,673 this year.
And that, he says, is a one-percent jump over last year -- the smallest since 2002.
"A fairly mild increase in inflation, and it somewhat mirrors what we see in the overall economy," he tells KYW Newsradio. "(The) general government Consumer Price Index is up 1.7 percent."
He notes that prices of eight of the items, including turtledoves, remained unchanged since last year. That's the most stability since 2006.
"The increases this year were the partridge in a pear tree, up 3.8 percent; French hens increased 10 percent; geese went up a lot, they went up 71.4 percent; and lords a-leaping get a little increase, at two percent."
Golden rings held steady, even though the commodity price has dropped from its high in 2013.
Dunigan says the Christmas Price Index is a fun learning tool for government CPI, complete with a web site at pncchristmaspriceindex.com. He says over the past 30 years, the year-to-year average increase has been 2.8 percent, exactly the same as the US inflation index.
