It's going to cost you more to stay warm on Christmas this year.

Plus, we've got a stocking full of widgets, toys, and games, all coming up.

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace. In Washington, D.C., I'm Kimberly Adams in for Kai Rizdahl.

It's Thursday, the 25th of December.

Thanks for joining us on this Christmas day.

It's a holiday associated with cooler, if not downright, cold weather in much of the country.

And as the temperatures drop, more people are cranking up the heat. But a lot of folks may be pausing at the thermostat thinking about what that energy bill is going to look like.

This winter, the average cost of heating is expected to

jump more than 9 percent. That's according to projections from the National Energy Assistance

Directors Association. And federal support for states to help low-income people with utility

bills was delayed about a month this year because of the government shutdown. Marketplaces Carla Javier

looked into the causes and consequences of these higher heating prices.

Even before winter sets in, families have already been struggling with utility costs, says Mark

Wolf of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association.

We estimated about one out of six families are behind in the utilities bills right now.

They owe about $23 billion to their utilities.

He says that's because customers are catching up from high costs over the summer.

The cost of cooling your house was the highest it had been in more than a decade.

In the past, the home heating season was the big expense.

Now we have both an expensive home heating season and an expensive home cooling season.

Really squeezing customers.

Wolf says there are a lot of reasons why heating keeps getting more expensive.

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