We do not need to remind you of the facts you already know: Thanksgiving is going to be a pocket buster this year. Normally a gut buster, sure.. An endless bountiful harvest of foods and spirits.
But this year?
The wallet will creek its way open with fear at the grocery store.. the purse will be a little more vacant and empty than previous years.
You can call it inflation..
But in 2022 it is…
TURKEYFLATION
So before we blame anyone–you can find old articles in money journals to figure out how a pandemic, government programs, and a slew of other policy and global decisions led to this–let’s just cut to the already known chase. Thanksgiving dinner, for better or worse, is going to cost a whole heck of a lot more than any other time in many of our lives.
So there are two sides to this gravy train.. We have lived high on the hog, or the gobbler, for a long time. Things have been alright for many.. Though there has been a constant struggle, the recent pain of what developed into an inflation-induced nightmare is a product of modern times.
We can travel back to the 1970s to find solace. If you find ‘living through history’ like others did to give you solace, then you really don’t understand what living through history means, right?
Thanksgiving pain from years ago
Back in 2018, long before a pandemic and the current inflation saga being lived through, USA TODAY provided a handy dandy FAQ sheet on what Thanksgiving dinner cost the year you were born!
For purposes of this article, that listing will be presented as the factual basis of the cost of dinner through previous decades. For your perusal and approval:
Total meal cost:Inflation adjusted cost: 1947 $5.68 $48.16 1948 $5.81 $46.59 1949 $5.62 $45.43 1950 $5.91 $47.25 1951 $6.48 $48.49 1952 $6.52 $47.82 1953 $6.31 $45.68 1954 $6.23 $44.69 1955 $6.13 $43.77 1956 $6.31 $44.24 1957 $6.46 $43.94 1958 $6.67 $44.32 1959 $6.52 $42.70 1960 $6.71 $43.24 1961 $6.61 $42.12 1962 $6.76 $42.56 1963 $6.82 $42.45 1964 $6.92 $42.49 1965 $7.09 $42.91 1966 $7.43 $43.84 1967 $7.39 $42.52 1968 $7.68 $42.55 1969 $8.15 $43.17 1970 $8.36 $42.31 1971 $8.63 $41.91 1972 $9.13 $42.90 1973 $11.09 $49.43 1974 $12.44 $50.21 1975 $13.30 $49.56 1976 $13.22 $46.69 1977 $14.27 $47.32 1978 $15.98 $49.53 1979 $17.45 $49.69 1980 $19.39 $49.83 1981 $20.04 $47.28 1982 $20.59 $46.01 1983 $20.82 $44.63 1984 $21.62 $44.66 1985 $21.93 $43.78 1986 $28.74 $56.15 1987 $24.51 $46.46 1988 $26.61 $48.54 1989 $24.70 $43.17 1990 $28.85 $48.30 1991 $25.95 $42.04 1992 $26.39 $41.64 1993 $27.49 $42.33 1994 $28.40 $42.83 1995 $29.64 $43.78 1996 $31.66 $45.79 1997 $31.75 $45.13 1998 $33.09 $46.67 1999 $33.83 $47.01 2000 $32.37 $43.89 2001 $35.04 $46.61 2002 $34.56 $45.38 2003 $36.28 $46.73 2004 $35.68 $44.84 2005 $36.78 $44.94 2006 $38.10 $45.32 2007 $42.26 $49.02 2008 $44.61 $50.24 2009 $42.91 $48.37 2010 $43.47 $48.18 2011 $49.20 $53.18 2012 $49.48 $52.48 2013 $49.04 $51.33 2014 $49.41 $50.95 2015 $50.11 $51.54 2016 $49.87 $50.75 2017 $49.12 $49.12 2018 $48.90 $48.90
A few things stand out.. First of all the cost of Thanksgiving dinner was actually declining in recent years. During the recession years of 2009 it also declined. It went down during the recession of 1991-92. It starting taking some larger jumps during the malaise of the Nixon and Carter years in the 70s..
But that was then. What about …now.
Thanksgiving dinner will cost a whopping 20% more than it did last year, according to a new survey released Wednesday by the American Farm Bureau Federation.
A feast for 10 with 12 menu items including a turkey, stuffing, cranberries, and pumpkin pie mix will cost $64.05 on average — up $10.74 from last year. That breaks down to about $6.50 per person, according to the annual survey.
The price of a 16-pound turkey is $28.96 on average this year, up 21% from 2021, according to the survey. Inflation cooled last month but still remains elevated at 7.7% for the year ending in October.
That’s pretty rough, no?
The best thing a family can do is just go pot-luck style. Have someone just bring a dish of their choice. But who, pretell, will buy the bird!
A COMPARISON
We decided to figure this one out for sure.. We found an old ad featuring some good solid prices from 1987, (if you look at the handy dandy chart you can see that is a year when Thanksgiving dinner went down significantly in cost from the year before.) And after that.. we figured we’d compare the prices in the fishwrapper advertisement to current times. For that, we went to Walmart.com and did a mock grocery order to see the difference.
Here is what we found.
We dug up a local Weis market ad from the POTTSVILLE REPUBLICAN on November 23, 1987..
Now let me first say, we may not eat most of what we are going to ‘mock’ purpose at the store in 1987.. but it’s to just .. make a point.
- We put the following in our cart:
- A fresh turkey! For us it was a 10 pounder. $5.90
- 2 cans of cranberry sauce for $.78
- A 5 pound ham $8.45
- 2 Blue Bonnet margarine quarters $.88
- A pineapple for $1.00
- A can of pitted olives for $.79
- 2 cans of yams for $.78
- And since we did not find potatoes or stuffing, we bought 2 boxes of thin mints as our carb overload for $1.38
THE GRAND TOTAL FOR THE REAGAN ERA: $19.96.
But .. we forgot a can of Planters Mixed Nuts, so a trip back to the store occurred while another hit from 1987 played, WALK LIKE AN EGYPTIAN.
This second virtual visit to 1987 Weis cost us an additional $2.69 for a grand total of $22.65
Time to compare to today.
Not sure what song is playing.. these days it’s a mixture of 80s 90s and 2000s.. for the purpose of this visit we will just play TOTO’s AFRICA in what appears to be a vacant mall.
- Here’s the 2022 wreckage:
- An ‘antibiotic free’ fresh 10 pound turkey for $21.80 ($2.18 per pound)
- Two Ocean Spray cranberry sauce cans … $1.76 each for a total of $3.52
- Got that 5 pound ham for $4.48 a pound: $22.40
- We got ourselves that same 2 blue bonnets for $4.48
- Got a great deal on the pineapple at $1.98
- The can of pitted olives if just $1.66
- A can of yams was $2.96 and we got two: $5.92
- Also forgo the potatoes and stuffing but got two boxes of thin mints, $4.58 each, for $9.16
- This time we remembered the can of mixed nuts but wished we’d have forgotten since it was $9.98…
The 2022 total is $70.92…
Ok.. we get it. The experts say the “average” dinner is going to cost $64 bucks this year.. but seriously, the $70.92 we are paying is without stuffing.. without salad.. without dessert.. without stuffing. It is just a unlively boring dinner. And we are almost spending $100 bucks while in 1987 we spent $22 on the same lousy Thanksgiving dinner.
But what about other years?
The SAME awful Thanksgiving dinner from 2022 would have been…
$33 in 1992
$42 in 2002
$57 in 2016
And right before the pandemic, $60 in 2019…
So let’s all relax.. Calm down. Spend a lot.
And just for fun, let’s watch Paul Blart from MALL COP enjoy Thanksgiving eve festivities…
