Cant load variable of other script from constructor

The thing is, I have a class GameItemContainer which has a static variable Container which is used to store the values imported from an XML file. I have another class named Item in which if I try to get the value of GameItemContainer.Container.items from the class variable's get command everything works fine, but if I call it from the constructor, it returns null for GameItemContainer.Container.

Here is Item.cs:

 using UnityEngine;
 using System.Collections.Generic;
 using System.Xml;
 using System.Xml.Serialization;
 using System.IO;

 public class Item
 {
 public string Name {get;set;}
 public string Price {get;set;}
 [XmlArray("ItemsNeededNames"), XmlArrayItem("ItemName")]
 public List<string> ItemsNeededNames { get; set; }
 public List<Item> ItemsNeeded {
     get {
         List<Item> allItems = GameItemContainer.Container.items; // All good
         List<Item> _neededItems = new List<Item> ();
         for (int i = 0; i < ItemsNeededNames.Count; i++) {
             for (int j = 0; j < allItems.Count; j++) {
                 if (ItemsNeededNames [i].ToLower () == allItems [j].Name.ToLower ()) {
                     _neededItems.Add (allItems [j]);
                     break;
                 }
             }
         }
         return _neededItems;
     }
 }
 
 //Constructors

 public Item() {}
 public Item(string itemName)
 {
     Debug.Log (GameItemContainer.Container); // it prints null

     var allItems = GameItemContainer.Container.items; // NullReferenceException
     for (int i = 0; i < allItems.Count; i++) {
         if (allItems[i].Name.ToLower() == itemName.ToLower()) {
             this.Name = allItems[i].Name;
             this.Price = allItems[i].Price;
             this.ItemsNeededNames = allItems[i].ItemsNeededNames;
             break;
         }
     }
 }
 }

Notice that inside ItemsNeeded I have:

 List<Item> allItems = GameItemContainer.Container.items;

And if I do

 print(GameItemContainer.Container.items[0].ItemsNeeded[0].Name);

from another script it prints what it needs to print, but calling that same thing from the constructor gives me null.

And here is GameItemContainer.cs:

 using UnityEngine;
 using System.Collections.Generic;
 using System.Xml;
 using System.Xml.Serialization;
 using System.IO;

 [XmlRoot("GameItemCollection")]
 public class GameItemContainer
 {
 [XmlArray("Items"),XmlArrayItem("Item")]
 public List<Item> items = new List<Item> ();


 // The problem comes when initializing items like this
 public static Item lighter = new Item("lighter");


 public static GameItemContainer Container = LoadXML ("gameItems");

 private static GameItemContainer LoadXML(string xmlname) {
     return GameItemContainer.Load (Path.Combine (Application.dataPath, "Scripts/XML/" + xmlname + ".xml"));
 }

 public static GameItemContainer Load(string path)
 {
     XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(GameItemContainer));
     using(var stream = new FileStream(path, FileMode.Open))
     {
         return serializer.Deserialize(stream) as GameItemContainer;
     }
 }
 }

It throws the error NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object at line inside the Item constructor

 var allItems = GameItemContainer.Container.items; // NullReferenceException

I think there aren't any errors and I've been struggling with this the past few hours. Any help would be greatly appreciated.