It’s the Christmas carol that seems to go on forever. The popular Christmas song, “The Twelve Days of Christmas”, with it’s golden rings, partridges in pear trees, and various other forms of livestock, entertainers, and animal tenders, gets longer with every verse. What would all of that cost? The Insurance brokerage Lockton and the trade magazine Insurance Journal have released an explanation of what it would cost to insure all the gifts that the “true love” in the song gave out.
First, one would need to take a close look at the quantity and type of the gifts that were given, and decide on the total value. By the end of the twelve days, there would have been 12 partridges, (presumably sharing the same pear tree), 22 turtle doves, 30 french hens, and 36 “calling birds”, (of no specific species, apparently). There would have been a total of 40 gold rings, 42 geese (which must all be female, since they all lay eggs), and 42 swans. There would be a total of 40 maids, (but no clear indication about the number of cows they would be employed to milk). Entertainers would include the 36 dancing ladies, and 30 leaping lords. There would also be a total of 22 pipers, (which one can assume means bagpipes), and 12 drummers. So, the dancers must be dancing a Scottish reel.
According to PNC Financial Services Group, it would cost you $23,439.38 to buy all of these gifts for your true love if you did it this Christmas, of 2010. The price has increased by 9.2% since 2009, when it was last configured. PNC is the company that prepares an updated price index that corresponds to “The Twelve Days of Christmas” every year.
What is a person to do with all that livestock? Lockton assumes that the incredibly fortunate receiver of the gifts would open a farm, with a gift shop to sell the eggs from the geese and the milk from the cows. The person would also need pretty good sized performance space, to accommodate the dancers and the pipe and drum band.
They figured out that this person would need a livestock mortality insurance policy, and a policy covering the cost of repair and replacement of the farming equipment. She might also need an environmental insurance policy, to deal with potential clean up of fertilizer and pesticides. All those gold rings would require a special jeweler’s block policy to cover the cost of repair or replacement if the rings were stolen. There would have to be a workers compensation policy, in case one of the milkmaids or dancers was injured on the job. And, since there would be performances going on, she would also need spectator liability coverage, in case an accident happened to someone who came to watch the shows. Together, her monthly premiums would come to about $465,000. Merry Christmas!