The 12 costs of Christmas: What can Irish households expect to spend?

Even in Covid times, Irish people love Christmas, maybe even especially in Covid times.

But love is not always cheap, which is why celebrating Christmas in Ireland costs more than pretty much every country in Europe. Few Irish homes will have much change out of €1000 once all the presents have been opened, the turkeys carved and the even the dodgy chocolates that no-one really likes – we’re looking at you Turkish Delight – eaten.

There are volumes of research stretching back decades suggesting that we spend at least twice the EU average on Christmas. The Dutch, by contrast, barely spend anything at all on Christmas although they do celebrate Sinterklaas on December 5th as well, so presumably much of their spending is diverted to that endlessly confusing – at least for us – and not entirely uncontroversial day.

Anyways, we are getting distracted.

Pricewatch: Know your consumer rights in run-up to Christmas

---

Pricewatch: Man claims he was unfairly denied boarding. Ryanair says otherwise

---

Cyber Monday: Beware of bogus deals and preying scammers

---

Last week a study from Retail Ireland was published suggesting that as much as €5.4 billion is set to be spent by consumers this Christmas, a 5 per cent increase on last year. All told, our Christmas spending comes in at about €1.6 billion more than is spent in the other months of the year.

Broken down, the spending works out at €832 per household. But we think it is more than that.

A lot more than that, in fact.

But how much more? We broke down the 12 costs of Christmas to work it out, and even by scrimping on food (we left the crisps and crackers off our shopping list) and not going entirely mad partying and buying mad expensive wines and spirits to drink at home, it was hard to escape the season of goodwill for less than two grand.

Here is where the money goes. Oh, and we can’t stress enough that we did not go mad with our imaginary spending as we did not want to overly aggravate the angriest people on Reddit and Twitter. “What! The clown said people might spend a fiver on a pint? Who does he think we are? Millionaires? Easy for him to say on his fat cat Dublin media salary”, etc.

1. The food

Irish people are not generally speaking good grocery shoppers, which goes some way to explaining why the average Irish home bins between €700 and €1,000 of the food bought every year. At Christmas time many people – and we including ourselves in this cohort – really lose the run of themselves and tend to shop like they are in some class of Supermarket Sweep or heading into a six week lockdown the like of which we haven’t seen in 21 months. One of the reasons we shop like people possessed or fearing a nuclear winter is because we eat so much on Christmas Day itself.

And how much do we eat? Well many Irish people are likely to consume in excess of 6,000 calories on the big day which is three times what we normally eat. We went virtual shopping for items normally eaten on Christmas Day and “bought” a turkey, ham, biscuits, mince pies, melon, plum pudding, breakfast stuff, vegetables and a few other Christmas Day essentials on the Tesco and Supervalu websites. We didn’t add anything outlandish to our basket and there were no high-end products either.

The cost of our items, enough to feed a family of five comfortably on the big day with a few leftovers for grazing on St Stephen’s Day, came to a fairly hefty €156.45. If we add another €150 to cover food on the days before and after Christmas, our total food bill comes in at €306.45. And we’ve not had so much as a drop to drink yet.

2. The booze

Not wanting to overdo it, we limited ourselves to a case of beer – Peroni as it happens – four bottles of stout, four bottles of red wine ranging in price from a tenner to €12.50, two bottles of champagne – but nothing fancy, the bottles cost 20 quid each – one bottle of whiskey to make Irish coffees and maybe douse the plum pudding, and then a bottle of gin. The bill came to €181 – we should make clear our imaginary family might hope to have some friends or family in over the Christmas so will probably not drink the lot – but even if they do, who are we to judge? Now add two adults going to the pub twice over the Christmas period assuming that is allowed. If they have four pints each (or the equivalent of other tipples) on each occasion – hardly excessive by festive standards – and the bill for alcohol rises to €261.

3. The tree

You may well be one of those people who has fake plastic tree that you take out of the attic each year and if you are, then we are not judging you (in truth we are, but we are hiding it well). A real tree will set you back anywhere between €50 and €150 – although Ikea is selling them for €30, but it’s very much an outlier in terms of price. So we will price the real tree at €70 and maybe add another €20 for a wreath of some kind.

4. Decorations

As long as you are not starting from scratch, you should not have to spend big on decking the halls this year. But if want to replace one set of lights, buy some class of random baubles and maybe add a bit of extra tinsel to your home you will still end up spending around €50 – even somewhere like Woodies, which has a 50 per cent off sale at present. If you buy your decorations in BTs, the 50 quid will probably get you one tasteful decoration infused with the scent of Christmas.

5. The ‘Christmas party’

The, um, good (?) news is the cost of the traditional office Christmas party has fallen somewhat over the last two seasons. The bad news is it has fallen because parties have been verboten and we don’t go to offices any more. If we replace what would have been commonplace in Christmases past with a sedate lunch with three colleagues, it will add maybe €70 on to the cost of Christmas – a sum we will have to double given there are two adults in our imaginary household. At least there won’t be the tiresome office Kris Kindle thing this year, so that should save a lot of people a tenner and a bucket of stress.

6. Presents

The good news for Irish parents is that Santa makes most of the children’s presents that find their way under our trees so that is a big saving right there. But if we imagine our family of five want to supplement the work of the big man from the North Pole – as well as buying presents for the adults in the family – we should set aside some money for that too. Now depending on the survey you read, Irish households are likely to spend anywhere between €300 and €500 on gifts this year. In some homes it will be a lot less. In some homes it will be a lot more. But for the sake of this exercise we will go with €300.

7. Santa and the panto

Are we allowed to do these things any more? There will certainly be pantomimes and there will certainly be visits to Santa even if they are drive-by deals. We had a look at ticket prices for the Little Mermaid in the Gaiety. They cost €35 each – oh no they don’t, oh yes they do etc. That means five people would spend a not-too-shabby €175 on the big day out – money well spent in Pricewatch’s view, but there you go. Add another €25 for a trip to see Santa and there’s another €200 gone.

8. Christmas cards and postage

If Covid has taught us nothing else, it is the value of family and friends. That is why Pricewatch is now a believer in cards – we have previously poured scorn on the notion. If you send 20 cards and pay a tenner for them, and €1.10 for 20 stamps, the cost comes in at €32.

9. Christmas clothes

A pair of lovely Christmas pyjamas costs €15 in Dunnes Stores. Buy five pairs and you have spent €75. We’ll add another 100 quid to cover new clothes for everyone – things to wear to mass or to visit the granny or to the dinner table on Christmas Day or whatever, and we’re on to the next cost.

10. Power

Unless you have been hiding under the duvet for the last six months – and let’s face it, there have been times when that is all any of us have wanted to do – you will be aware of the horrendous increase in energy costs that have been rolled out by all providers. Some hikes mean Irish homeowners will have to spend in excess of €800 more on heating and lighting their homes this year when compared with last. Energy usage spikes in December – the days are darker, the oven is on the go more, the Christmas lights are flickering and the telly is on non-stop. So we will add €50 to our festive bill.

11. Travel

If you want to visit relatives either down the country or in the city you’ll need to get there. A return trip cross-country from Dublin to Galway will cost you about €80 in petrol or diesel. Each additional road trip will cost you more again.

12. Charity

Charitable donations always rise at Christmas and Lord knows the charities need our support. So we will allow another €100 to be spend on direct donations and contributions to flag days and carol services.

Now, where are we at? Little Drummer Boy – start the roll now. The Pricewatch total household spend for what looks like a fairly standard Irish Christmas is an eye-wateringly expensive €1,784.45 – and any class of partying to see the new year in has yet to be factored in.

And the 12 fake costs of Christmas...

While we are talking about the 12 real costs of Christmas on this page there are others who were more focussed on the 12 fake costs Christmas.

Those fake costs put our spending in the ha’penny place.

We all know that on the first day of Christmas their true love gave to them a partridge in a pear tree, but have you ever wondered what it would cost and how much you would have to spend on the rest of the presents?

Well wonder no more. Every year for the guts of 40 years in the US a bank by the name of PNC has measured exactly how much all the gifts would set you back and the bad news is that inflation has hit the song hard this year.

All told the price of the 12 presents has climbed by 5.7 per cent since 2019, with the grand total coming in at $41,205.58 (€36,318) . So, where does the money go?

A partridge in a pear tree: $222.68 (€196.20)

Two turtle doves: $450 (€396.48)

Three French hens: $255 (€224.67)

Four calling birds: $599.96 (€528.60)

Five gold rings: $895 (€788.55)

Six geese a laying $660 (€581.61)

Seven swans a swimming: $13,125 (€11,566.08)

Eight maids a milking: $58 (€51.11)

Nine ladies dancing: $7,552.84 (€6,655.75)

Ten lords a leaping: $11,260 (€9,922.59)

Eleven pipers piping: $2,943.93 (€2,594.26)

Twelve drummers drumming: $3,183.17 (€2,805.09)

But buying the presents is one thing. Getting them delivered is another thing altogether. Helpfully the PNC people did go some way to working out how much it would cost to get the presents delivered to your true love. It put the delivery costs at $4,394 (€3,872.89), although that price does not include any Brexit related charges we may have to pay here. And we’re pretty sure the folk at An Post would not take kindly to delivering the swans a swimming, never mind the Lords a leaping.