Every December, PNC Financial tabulates its “Christmas Price Index” to calculate the total cost of buying one’s true love all of the items listed in the beloved song, “The 12 Days of Christmas.”
Well, actually that song isn’t so much “beloved” as it is barely tolerated. It’s under 4 minutes long, but it seems so much longer, doesn’t it? It’s been redeemed, occasionally, by Muppets and McKenzies and by ridiculous a cappella arrangements, but absent such reinventions it gets to be a bit much.
Still, though, PNC’s annual “Christmas Price Index” is kind of fun. This year they’ve totaled the cost at over $114,000.
That’s out of reach for most people, but that’s OK, since most of us also don’t have a true love who would appreciate receiving, as our Christmas gift to them:
- 12 drummers drumming
- 22 pipers piping
- 30 Lords-a-leaping
- 36 ladies dancing
- 40 maids-a-milking
- 42 swans-a-swimming
- 42 geese-a-laying
- 40 golden rings
- 36 calling birds
- 30 french hens
- 22 turtle doves, and
- 12 partridges in 12 pear trees.
That’s just nothing like the wish list or the shopping list of anyone most of us know.
We need a Christmas song we can relate to — a song we can afford.
And that’s where Robert Earl Keen provides a valuable service with his should-be-a-classic song, “Merry Christmas From the Family.” Many of us can relate to the kind of family holiday gathering Keen describes.
Keen’s song doesn’t involve 12 days of Christmas. All of its shopping takes place on Christmas day itself, with some willing designated driver sent out to pick up some last minute necessities — precisely 12 of them, in fact — at the Stop and Go or the gas station or wherever else might be open on the 25th of December.
In the spirit of Keen’s song, of families like the one he describes, and of everyone who can’t afford $114K to buy a partridge-infested orchard and hire leaping Lords, here is my own annual version of the Christmas Price Index — the Keen Family CPI.
ice: $2.99
extension cord: $10.59
can of bean dip: $2.99
Diet Rites*: $5.29
box of Pampers: $34.99
Marlboro Lights: $5.60
celery: $2.49
can of fake snow**: $4.46
bag of lemons: $4.00
Diet Sprites: $4.24
box of tampons: $7.49
Salem Lights: $6.18
TOTAL COST: $91.31.
So $91.31 (tax included, where applicable) is a lot cheaper than $114,000 — even though you’re paying the convenience-store premium where everything costs way more than it would at one of the stores that aren’t open late Christmas Day.
Plus this party sounds like it was a whole lot more fun than the one involving swans and milk-maids.
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* Do they still make Diet Rite? I couldn’t find any, so I’ve substituted another off-brand diet cola.
** Fake snow in a can was not to be found in any area convenience store. The price here is a rough median from online retailers.
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