On 26 December 2025, hundreds of people queued for Christmas food parcels at Tallinnanaukio in eastern Helsinki. Yle reported that the first arrivals came at about 9 a.m. and that the line extended for hundreds of metres. Lilja Nikolajeva, aged over eighty and supported by a walking stick, waited for more than three hours.
The parcels and gifts were leftovers from a Christmas Eve event for people with low incomes or facing loneliness. Yet that event had itself attracted record demand, leaving hundreds without a meal. A second long queue for what remained exposed a shortage in two stages. Christmas could not be postponed, as one recipient observed, even when benefit payments arrived only after the holiday.