Inflation has reached the partridge, the pear tree and almost everything in between.
PNC Bank’s 2025 Christmas Price Index shows holiday gift costs climbing 4.5% this year, with the full set of items from “The Twelve Days of Christmas” now topping $51,000.
The annual index, released each December, calculates what it would cost to buy every gift mentioned in the carol — from the lone partridge to all twelve drummers drumming.
This year’s price tag for one full set is $51,476.12, a reflection of rising labor, commodity and agricultural costs across the broader economy.
Some of the most dramatic increases appeared in surprising places.
Five gold rings saw one of the sharpest jumps, rising more than 32% due to soaring global gold prices.
The partridge in a pear tree climbed more than 13%, driven by higher orchard and land-use costs.
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But not everything on the list followed the inflation trend. Five gifts saw no increase at all:
- two turtle doves
- three French hens
- four calling birds
- seven swans-a-swimming
- eight maids-a-milking
PNC notes that steady pricing in these categories reflects relatively stable conditions in bird breeding, livestock and minimum-wage-based services — a rare pocket of consistency in an otherwise inflation-heavy season.
Meanwhile, the “True Cost of Christmas” — a cumulative total that includes every gift repeated each time the song cycles — rose to $218,542.98, up 4.4% from last year.
And even excluding the notoriously volatile swans, the “core” index still rose 6.1%, underscoring persistent inflation across many sectors.
First introduced in 1984, the Christmas Price Index began as a lighthearted way to explain economic trends, but it has become an annual measure of how prices ripple through everything from commodities to services — even when wrapped in holiday whimsy.
No one is actually buying 364 gifts for their true love (right?), but the index’s increases mirror the real-world costs consumers face during the holiday season.
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