Every Christmas morning starts with the same ritual: We prepare a big pot of rice pudding and drop a single almond into the steaming pot. If you are the lucky one to bite into the almond during breakfast, you will be granted a wish. Obviously, everybody wants to find that crunchy treasure and will eagerly dig into their rice pudding. Every year, my secret wish was that Santa, and I mean the real Santa, whose name is in fact Joulupukki, would come by our house and personally hand us our presents. I knew that it was a lot to ask, since Joulupukki lives all the way up in the north of Lapland in a place called Korvatunturi. A place, where during winter the sun never shines and during summer the sun never sets. I was convinced he existed. I had read books about the secret factory, in which little elves would work night and day to make sure that each child who behaved well had a present to receive. However, I was not living in Finland, so I had some doubts about Santa traveling all the way to Germany, just to bring me some presents. But when I was munching away on my rice pudding one Christmas morning and suddenly heard that little crunch, I knew that this year Santa would come. And believe it or not, that evening he walked through the door with a sack full of presents – I was elated! You might ask, how I was able to tell that it was the real Santa: Well, quite simply, he spoke Finnish!