The True Value of Christmas

December 10, 2009 by Cindy Barnes

I was musing recently if my true love had ever considered what I might value for Christmas.  If he had, I thought, I wouldn’t have received the 8mb memory card for my digital camera that I received last year.  I know this sounds ungrateful but if
value = benefits – cost (where cost can also be risk), then I’m not that excited about having extra memory for my camera, it’s not that big a benefit to me. 

Now, I know this isn’t the true meaning of the value of Christmas, but with my mind (sadly) focused just on money, I then started thinking about the cost of Christmas, as I do at this time every year. You’ll have got by now from the value equation that value is not the same as cost, as some retailers would have us believe with their ‘value ranges’.

I came across this amusing economic analysis by PNC Wealth Management for 2009. It’s based on the cost of gifts in the seasonal carol, The Twelve Days of Christmas.

The 2009 price tag is a total of $87,403 for all of the items in the carol, purchased repeatedly as the song suggests. The cost of buying each item just once increased this year to $21,466. Not bad considering the price is up just a bit at $794, or less than 1 percent, from $86,609 last year. PNC, who have been calculating the cost of Christmas since 1984, attributed the modest increase to lower energy costs and fewer wage increases.

Watch their great video to explore the 2009 PNC Christmas Price Index in detail.

Cindy

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Tags: Christmas, gifts, holiday season, pricing, value, value equation, value proposition