IT might be Christmas, but you’ll probably still be watching the budget.
So before embarking on a bout of binge buying for your true love, it might be sensible to look at the cost of that traditional hamper of gifts, as pointed up in The Twelve Days of Christmas.
The song’s admirably eclectic round-up of poultry, game, bling, minor aristocracy and performance artists is probably as good a yardstick as any to measure the rising cost of Christmas.
Partridges are still abundant, your true love will be pleased to hear. Picture: iStock/Michelley241. A partridge in a pear tree
These days a partridge will set you back something like a fiver from any good butcher’s or farm shop. You could conceivably bag one yourself in the wild, with dog and gun, but you won't have much change out of a few hundred quid after you've paid for petrol, dog food, kennel, transport etc.
So let's say £5 for the bird. Pear trees from your local garden centre will probably set you back about some thirty pounds or so, giving a total for the first day of Christmas of £35.
2. Two turtle doves
Problems, this time with the birds. The European turtle dove is currently struggling in terms of numbers, so it’s probably better to go for a close relative like the wood pigeon. They’re usually around £3.50, so total cost of £7.
3. Three French hens
Pop along to your nearest poultry farm and ask for three of the finest specimens, something like Bassette Liègeoises or Ardenner Bolstaarts. But don’t forget, you’ll need a hen-run and lots of corn, so the total cost is in the region of £500.
4. Four collie birds
Four collie birds pose another Crimbo conundrum. A collie bird is in fact a blackbird, or Turdus merula as it likes to be called on formal occasions. Blackbirds are again protected by the Countryside Act and EU regulations, so we'll have to settle for wood pigeons once more. They’re widely available from most butchers, at around the £3.50 mark – so that’s £14 for the lot.
Gold rings — make sure you buy one without a curse5. Five gold rings
Gold rings run from £60 upwards. Well, we don’t want to stint in this area, so let’s call it £1800. And make sure they come with no strings attached, such as the Plotnik Ring. Not heard of it? Here we go: two ladies sitting in a restaurant. One says: “I just love that beautiful diamond ring you’re wearing.”
“Yes,” replies the other woman, “that’s the famous Plotnik Diamond. The only trouble is, it comes with a terrible curse...”
The other woman looks horrified and exclaims: “Oh how awful! What is it?”
“Mr. Plotnik.”
6. Six geese a-laying
Six geese a-laying can be bought from any farmyard, but we seem to have enough birds flying about — enough poultry in motion as it were. So what do you say to bringing your true love six tubs of goose fat available from most farm shops? You’re agreeable? Excellent! At around a fiver a tub that’s a total of £30.
A cheap way round the swan problem7. Seven swans a-swimming
Seven swans a-swimming constitutes another difficulty. According to the Schedules of the Wildlife and Countryside Act (1981) swans are protected birds — apart from the fact that the Queen, apparently, owns most of those in Britain, so we can't really present them to our true love. You don’t want the Queen turning up on your doorstep on Christmas Day slagging you off.
Best thing is probably to take your true love to a local called The Swan or the White Swan or maybe The Three Swans. If you plump for the latter, you’ll need to take her twice — to make it up to six — plus a packet of Swan matches to reach the seasonal seven. A night at a local hostelry probably won’t cost more than £50, and that includes lashings of bubbly and nibbles. So that’s £100 for the two nights, plus 70p for the matches, giving a bill of £100.70
8. Eight maids a-milking
Eight maids a-milking shouldn't be too expensive. Sadly, agricultural wages are notoriously low — so let's say about £432 for the entire day.
Piping hot, especially for your true love. Picture: iStock/Michelley249. Nine pipers piping
Now, who do we go to for this? The Luton Pipe band? Or something more along the lines of Liam O'Flynn or Davy Spillane? We want nine of them, so we’ll see if a local town band can provide them. We’ll put aside £1000, plus tea and biscuits as a rider — and guarantee them no piper jokes. (Such as, what’s perfect pitch? When you throw a set of bagpipes at the bin and they go straight in.)
10. Ten ladies dancing
This is a very difficult figure to compute. How do we choose? We could employ an amateur from Strictly, but that’s hardly likely to impress. Maybe our best bet is to settle for some ballet dancers, pay them the going rate (around £150 per day) and tell them to get on with a few en pointe pas de basques. Total bill of £9,000.
11. Eleven lords a-leaping
Members of the House of Lords are entitled to a daily allowance of £300. So for our eleven leaping lords we can allow £3,300.
A battery of bodhrán players or a drum machine? Picture: Steve Ford Elliott12. Twelve drummers drumming
These days twelve drummers will set you back quite a bit. Musician union rates would dictate something like two hundred quid an hour for a top notch percussionist.
A cheaper option is probably to get a Korg Volca Beats drum machine , and programme it for 12 drum tracks, total cost £119.99. And remember, the advantage of a drum machine over a drummer is that you only have to punch the information into a drum machine once.
This gives us a total of £16,338.69, which bears out the old adage: "Christmas comes but once a year / And when it does it's bloody dear."
But there's even more disturbing news; we are treating the the enterprise on a non-cumulative basis — only adding up the cost each day’s individual gifts. However, if we look at it exponentially, with — as per the song — presents accreting every day, then we have to employ the formula:
Sum = n/2[2+(n-1)] — where n = the number of individual presents
This gives us 364 presents in total, or a total cost of:
£60,757.10
It's enough to make you choke on the last of the Quality Street.
