KEY POINTS:
So you think you're spending too much money on Christmas presents this year? Well, think again because this quiz will make the biggest Scrooge feel better. Much better.
1. The most expensive Christmas crackers in the world come from British company, Fortnum & Mason. They contain such delights
as coffee cups, leather humidors and crystal covered decorations. What price would seem appropriate for such exclusive goodies?
a $430 for six crackers.
b $140 for one cracker.
c $2900 for six crackers.
d $8600 for one cracker.
2. Why would anyone want to pay around $24,000 for a Christmas card?
a Because it had a picture of a Christmas tree and that tree was decorated with genuine diamonds.
b Because it was the biggest Christmas card in the world, part of a record-breaking effort and that's how much it cost to make.
c Because it was one of the first Christmas cards ever made.
d Because it was part of a charity auction, a Feed The World Christmas card sent by Robbie Williams to the Spice Girls.
e Because the late John Lennon drew it and sent it to the Beatles manager, Brian Epstein.
3. If you were to buy your true love the gifts exactly as described in the Christmas carol, Twelve Days of Christmas, which do you think might be the priciest element this year?
a Ten lords a-leaping and nine ladies dancing.
b Gold rings.
c A partridge in a pear tree.
d Seven swans a-swimming.
e Two turtle doves.
4. If you ate the world's most expensive Christmas fruit cake, valued at around $2.4 million, you would be in danger of what?
a Choking on dust - this cake is a royal historical artefact and has been sitting in a museum for the past 50 years. They may get a little dry but English fruitcakes last forever.
b Choking on diamonds - around 223 were embedded into the icing.
c Choking on your own vomit - this kind of excess is ridiculous and it makes you feel sick. Who are these crazed consumerist cake-makers?
d Choking on the exotic quatsequeliuma fruit. This very rare foul-smelling fruit is found high in the Himayalas and is said to have both aphrodisiac and age-defying properties.
5. The most expensive Christmas tree in the world is either decorated with, or made out of, which substance?
a Diamonds.
b Gold.
c Swarovski crystals.
d Christmas baubles made and signed by Hollywood's biggest stars.
e Bits of moon rock.
6. Every year since 1951, US department store Neiman Marcus has published a Christmas book full of gift ideas. And in that book, there's a fantasy section that could drive millionaires to buying Lotto tickets. So which of these fantasy gifts is really only fantasy?
a A 20-foot skyscraper sculpture made out of sharpened pencils, valued at about $87,000.
b A futuristic electric-powered vehicle that seats two, worth $58,000.
c A charter flight for six into outer space for around $2.5 million.
d Your own extreme backyard water park, complete with slides and fountains, starting at $145,000.
e A Diamond Fantasy bra, worth about $6.5 million.
ANSWERS
1: c. And they're on sale now. The three thousand pound price tag was real too. Asprey and Garrard, the British jewellers, put this price tag on a solid silver cracker in 2000. It didn't explode or contain a silly joke but buyers could pull off the top and fill it with anything they liked.
2: c. This Christmas card, printed in London in 1843, was one of the first batch of commercial Christmas cards and was sent to a Miss Mary Tripsack. It made over $23,000 at auction in England. The next most expensive would have been the card hand drawn by John Lennon - this fetched around $12,000 in 2000.
3: a. Every year an American financial firm performs a tongue-in-cheek analysis of the song Twelve Days of Christmas to see how much the seasonal price of catering for your true love has increased or decreased. This year hiring lords to leap and ladies to dance would cost you around $13,000 to hire while gold rings remained stable, at around $472 for five. Swans would cost about $6100, the partridge and its tree about $196 and the turtle doves would be perfect for the budget-minded romantic at around $58.
4: b. It was made by a Tokyo baker in 2005 and until the Luxury Brands Bridal show it was one of the most expensive cakes in the world. However at the aforementioned bridal show, they came up with a $29 million wedding cake that had its own team of security guards and seems unlikely ever to be eaten. Pity that. And about that quatsequeliuma fruit? Well, we made that one up.
5: b. It's made out of 21-carat gold by a Japanese jeweller and valued at around $1.2 million. A tree decorated with 600 crystals in Singapore comes closer at about $364,000 while the Hollywood tree, decorated by stars like Christina Aguilera and Leonardo di Caprio with personal baubles, only brought in around $11,000 at auction.
6: e. This is a trick question. If your credit card limit is expansive enough and your bank manager understanding enough, then sure, you could actually gift all of these things this Christmas. It's just that the Victoria's Secret lingerie, encrusted with 800 carats worth of diamonds, doesn't appear in the Neiman Marcus Christmas Book. And you might also want to bear in mind that the Virgin Galactic space charters won't be going anywhere until at least 2009.
