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) are given, one for each day of the year besides Christmas.) An anonymous "antiquarian", writing in 1867, speculated that "pear-tree" is a corruption of French "perdrix" (partridge), and "colley" a corruption of French "collet" (ruff, hence "we at once have a bird with a ruff, "i.e.", the ruff-pigeon"). Cecil Sharp, writing in 1916, observed that "from the constancy in English, French, and Languedoc versions of the 'merry little partridge,' I suspect that 'pear-tree' is really "perdrix" (Old French "pertriz") carried into England"; and "juniper tree" in some English versions may have been "joli perdrix," [pretty partridge]. Sharp also suggests the