The New York printer name-dropped in Sleigh Ride went out of business more than 100 years ago, but if the tune makes you nostalgic for holidays of yore, you can still buy decorations that look “like a picture print from Currier & Ives.”

Bear in mind, however, that you won’t be paying prices of yore, especially not this year.

Christmas trees, ornaments and lights have undergone a considerable markup, not unlike images from Currier & Ives, which used to advertise itself as the “Grand Central Depot for Cheap and Popular Prints.”

Need a Little Christmas

What’s happened is that the US has more or less imposed tariffs on Christmas: There are average levies of 26.9% on artificial holiday trees, compared with nothing a year ago, and tariffs of 26.6% on Christmas lights, up from 0.3% last year, according to data collected by card-processor Mastercard. Popular gifts haven’t escaped, either, with tariffs of 20% or more on toys and 10.6% on video game consoles (both up from nothing a year ago), as well as 9.9% on perfumes (up from 0.2%). That’s on top of persistent inflation, which hovered at 3% when it was last measured in September.

While retailers are taking pains to limit price increases, especially during the lucrative holiday shopping season, most are passing on at least some of the cost. And shoppers are feeling the burn, realizing they will have to pay more just to give their friends, spouses and children gifts comparable to last year’s. Many say they can’t keep up, according to consulting firm Deloitte, which predicts the average consumer will spend about $1,595 on holiday gifts and parties this year, down 10% from last year.

Think of it as a Hard Candy Christmas, a good time to break out the apple wine (as long as it’s domestic). Almost 60% of consumers expect the US economy to weaken in the next six months, the most negative outlook since the firm began tracking it in 1997.

In fact, nearly two-thirds of consumers expect to feel financial strain even sooner, during the holiday season that’s already underway, according to a Bank of America survey; 62% blame inflation and 58% fault tariffs. Florida resident Loly Deschamps has already seen the fallout. When she bought Air Jordan sneakers for her 17-year-old son’s birthday, she discovered that the $300 price tag mushroomed at checkout: Shipping, sales taxes and tariffs added $163. Which leaves her a little wary of the bills for Christmas presents. Many of the items she tossed in an Amazon cart throughout the year for her 3- and 5-year-old children (including a haul of Bluey toys) now have a label attached warning that they’re no longer available for the original price.

While her youngest children are typically satisfied with lots of toys and aren’t fussy about brands, the roughly $300 total cost from last year is already mushrooming toward $500. “I’m one of the many, many people in this country just putting myself into more debt because we want to continue purchasing the things that we’re used to purchasing, but they’re asking so much more for them,” Deschamps said.

Not by choice, necessarily.

Cassie Abel, who founded Idaho-based women’s apparel company Wild Rye in 2016, was forced to raise prices for new fall merchandise by an average of 10%, and that covers only a fraction of the roughly 30% in tariffs that her firm is paying for inventory. “For a brand of our size, it’s really painful because our margins were just getting to a healthy position and now our margins are dropping, which is slowing our path to profitability,” she told The Daily Upside.

(Waiting on) Department Store Santa

To cover the gap, Wild Rye froze hiring and scaled back on marketing, which means it won’t get its typical boost from holiday media coverage, potentially undermining some of its product investments. The company, which specializes in premium sports wear, introduced ski outerwear just a month ago after four years of work. “We’ve been developing the product for a very long time to get it just right,” she said. Sales have made a strong start, Abel added, “but I’m definitely nervous about what the global economy and our national economy are looking like for a high-price-point purchase like a premium ski outerwear kit.”

She’s noticed already that Wild Rye’s retail partners are more conservative with holiday inventory purchases this year, which signals broader economic caution. “I’m not super-optimistic about the holiday season, which is tough because we’ve also taken a huge hit from the tariff perspective,” Abel said. “We’re in a fortunate position where we have a really strong brand, and we’ve continued to grow through everything that’s been thrown at us, but we’re a business in growth mode, so we’re not profitable yet, and we’re going to end up reporting higher losses than we planned.” At the moment, she said, many shoppers seem to be waiting for holiday sales, a sentiment reflected in surveys by the National Retail Federation, whose members make up the largest private-sector employer in the US, supporting more than one in four jobs.

Christmas in July

About 63% of shoppers plan to do much of their shopping on Thanksgiving weekend, when stores typically entice consumers with a barrage of discounts and, at brick-and-mortar businesses, extended hours, the group found. Worried by tariffs and inflation, consumers are searching for deals, the organization’s chief economist, Mark Matthews, said on a call with reporters last week.

The group expects that shoppers who pay more for Christmas decorations and gifts will cut costs elsewhere, perhaps on recreation and dining out. “We expect them to continue to prioritize spending on loved ones, spending on families, and if that costs more, they’re going to make savings in other areas of the economy,” he said.

Another way holiday shoppers have tried to manage costs is by starting early, with 52% of those surveyed by Bank of America buying gifts even before October, the month when Christmas decorations begin to replace Halloween costumes and inflatable skeletons in big-box retail stores. Tariffs played a role, too, since 27% of shoppers wanted to buy gifts before import levies drove up the price, Mary Hines Droesch, Bank of America’s head of small business and consumer products and analytics, explained at a conference previewing holiday spending. Despite that growing trend, the holiday season can still be make or break for consumer-oriented companies. The months from October through December are typically when Austin, Texas-based Fireside Games generates its profit.

‘Paying the Price’

Its lineup of board games from Castle Panic to Don’t Burn My Village, in which players bribe a dragon to spare their community, is family-friendly, which means it’s price-sensitive, founder Anne-Marie DeWitt told The Daily Upside. While Fireside Games typically doesn’t charge more than $40 for its products, one new release, Ham Helsing, comes with acrylic stands and double-layered boards, features that initially required a $50 price point. Tariffs on Chinese imports forced the company to raise the price to $60. “It’s getting good reviews, and it has gotten a lot of media interest, a lot more than we normally get with a game,” DeWitt said. “But I’m nervous about that price point and what the consumer reaction is going to be to that. That’s with the tariffs at 30% with China, and with that one, we had to take a certain hit to our bottom line.”

That kind of sticker shock is easier for middle- and higher-income families to absorb, at least so far, according to Bank of America data. Still, many are using credit cards to manage their spending. The downside is that buying presents with credit cards that carry variable interest rates drives the total cost up considerably, Deschamps said. While a different choice might be more prudent financially, “What do you tell your kids?” she asked. “‘No, mommy can’t afford it?’ No, you do your best, and you end up paying the price for it.”