Price of True Love Falls Slightly for ’88 Christmas

Buying your true love the gifts in the “Twelve Days of Christmas” will cost you more than a song but less than last year.

The 12th day would cost $13,785.63, down 0.6%, said Robert Christian, director of economic and fixed income research at Provident National Bank.

If you were to buy or hire each item every day it is mentioned in the popular carol, you’d spend a total of $67,745.74, down 1.4% from last year.

“This may be due to a decrease in the price of five gold rings, which are down $125, or 20%, from a high of $750 in 1987,” Christian said. “People just aren’t buying them in groups of five anymore. These days, usually one will suffice.”

This is the fourth year Christian has compiled his CPI, or Christmas Price Index. He consults zoos, importers and the entertainment industry for figures.

Here are the 1988 prices:

- A partridge in a pear tree, $39.95, down $5.

- Two turtle doves, $50, unchanged.

- Three French hens, $15, unchanged.

- Four calling birds, $280, unchanged.

- Five gold rings, $625, down $125.

- Six geese a-laying, $150, unchanged.

- Seven swans a-swimming, $7,000, unchanged.

- Eight maids a-milking, $26.80 a day, unchanged.

- Nine ladies dancing, $1,800 a day, unchanged.

- Ten lords a-leaping, $2,000 a day, up $220.

- Eleven pipers piping, $863.46 a day, up $21.26.

- Twelve drummers drumming, $935.42 a day, up $22.82.