One of the traditional Finnish christmas foods is riisipuuro, rice porridge. It is eaten with sugar and cinnamon, sometimes with sekametelisoppa, which is a plum juice/soup. The porridge itself is made from porridge rice, which is similar to sushi rice and risotto rice, because it has big round grains. When making the porridge, a single almond is added to the porridge and the eater who gets the almond may wish for something in the hopes that the magic of christmas will make the wish come true. If you want to make Finnish riisipuuro, here is a recipe, from https://www.martat.fi/reseptit/riisipuuro/
You need:
2,5 dl water
1 l milk || traditionally cow milk, but I use oat milk. Other plant based milks ought to work as well
2 dl porridge rice || sushi rice and risotto rice may work as well if you cannot find porridge rice
1 whole almond || if you're not allergic of course
1. Boil the water in a pot.
2. Add rice and stir. Wait until there is no water left.
3. Add the milk and stir, until it boils.
4. Cook for around 40 minutes and stir from time to time || remember to stir, you don't want the porridge to burn
5. Add the almond and serve with cinnamon and sugar.
Secret hack for those with rice cookers!
Alternatively you can make rice porridge in a rice cooker as well. That's how I do it nowadays, but this is not normal in Finland, because rice cookers are very rare. However, it is way easier because you do not have to worry about it burning. I usually make it so that I just add the water and milk to the rice cooker both at the beginning, and then put my cooker on an hour and a half porridge program. Works fine with me at least!
Also a fun fact! My name (Kaneli) actually means cinnamon in Finnish. This means christmas season is especially fun to me, because I get to hear constantly jokes about people either eating me in their porridge or accusations of cannibalism, because I eat rice porridge with cinnamon.
All the things that were in the Sonic Prime advent calendar. I have seen a picture online where someone posted the things that you get, however some of mine were different from that. Makes me wonder if that picture was from the prototype of the calendar and the contents got changed between what they originally were gonna include and what they actually included in the final product, since that is a thing that can happen.
Tails Nine and Thorn Rose are stamps.
In Finnish Santa Claus is called Joulupukki, literally Christmas (male) goat. What's up with that?
The name joulupukki comes from an old tradition of young men dressing up in goat skin and horns after christmas and wandering from house to house asking for christmas leftovers like food or beer. This tradition is called nuuttipukki (the last day of joulu/yule time in the pagan calendar is called Nuutinpäivä) and they did not bring presents of any kind. The tradition of a present giving christmas figure from central Europe probably got mixed up with the traditional Finnish nuuttipukki with time, and the idea of an old man giving gifts became an important part of Finnish christmas traditions too. However, the name pukki (goat) never left.
The red look of Joulupukki is also considerably new. Up until 1960s at least, the most common Santa in Finland still had heavy elements from the look of nuuttipukki with a goat-skin-like clothes and toned down colour palette. Nowadays joulupukki is most often pretty similar to the red Coca-Cola Santa from USA with a sprinkle of tonttu tradition in it too.
Okay so the thing you guys need to know about today's Häärijä's tik tok in the ski jumper suit is that they are making a parody of an old and legendary finnish comedy sketch show Kummeli, and more specifically it's section called "sporttivartti" (sport quarter/15 minutes) which featured an interview with a coach Raimo Vormisto who talks a lot in a thicc dialect/accent/emphasis and the silent, a bit confused and simple sportman Timo Silakka. Depending on the episode the sport could be anything.
youtube
I am fully convinced the Khäärijä calendar will have more references to this, along with referenced to finnish Christmas shows which are a yearly stable or of iconic nature like "Tonttu Tolijanteri" or "The Joulukalenteri". This is not the first time they've referenced Kummeli and I'm quite convinced it has been an influence on what they are doing humor-wise.