The legacy carriers add a holiday-travel surcharge and secure an Ebenezer nomination.

The nation’s biggest airlines know what they want for Christmas. In fact, they announced it last week: $10 more from every passenger flying during three busy days around Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day — the bookends of the holiday travel season.

The surcharge will be levied on all passengers flying Nov. 29 — the Sunday after Thanksgiving — and Jan. 2 and 3. An Associated Press story in Saturday’s paper said American Airlines, United Airlines, US Airways and Delta Air Lines will add the surcharge; Southwest Airlines and Continental Airlines will not.

Air travelers expects prices to jump on busy travel days, but we like to assume those prices have some basis in the law of supply and demand. That isn’t necessarily the case with the holiday-travel surcharge. If your flight is mostly empty, you’ll still pay the extra $10. On the other hand, if your flight is a popular one, the surcharge isn’t going to prevent airlines from jacking up the ticket price even higher.

As a result, the big airlines have secured the first nomination in the Savvy Consumer Ebenezer Award. There will be other contenders — probably many of them — and visitors to my blog will be able to vote for the winner during the 12 days of Christmas. The award comes with no trophy or prize, save the winner’s right to brag that it didn’t let the festive, Yuletide spirit of goodwill get in the way of sticking it to consumers.

If you think a company might be worthy of an Ebenezer nomination, shoot me an e-mail or comment below.