Christmas Price Index chose the items in the popular Christmas carol "The Twelve Days of Christmas" as its market basket: a partridge in a pear tree, two turtle doves, three French hens, four calling birds, five gold(en) rings, six geese, seven swans, eight maids, nine dancing ladies, ten leaping lords, eleven pipers, and twelve drummers. According to tradition, the purchasing of the items begins on December 26 and ends on January 6. PNC compiles both a "Christmas Price Index" and "The True Cost of Christmas." The "Christmas Price Index" is calculated by adding the cost of the items in the song. The "True
The Twelve Days of Christmas (song) day of St. Stephen Protomartyr), to the day before Epiphany, or the Feast of the Epiphany (6 January, or the Twelfth Day). Twelfth Night is defined by the "Oxford English Dictionary" as "the evening of the fifth of January, preceding Twelfth Day, the eve of the Epiphany, formerly the last day of the Christmas festivities and observed as a time of merrymaking." The best known English version was first printed in English in 1780 in a little book intended for children, "Mirth without Mischief", as a Twelfth Night "memories-and-forfeits" game, in which a leader recited a verse, each of the