Feliz Navidad

I know a lot of people who will relate to this. Meditation, calming down exercises, soothing ethereal music, chai lattes, and on-duty stress counselors can only go so far. Some people just have an unquenchable need to slug someone.

In Peru, they have Takanakuy. It sounds like fun, but what it is, is a fighting festival in the small town of Santo Tomas.  

It takes place on Christmas every year.

People of all ages, including children, have the chance to settle grudges, close out on old differences, and basically clean each other's clocks before getting on with the holiday hi-jinx.

Takanakuy means "to hit each other," so there's no effort made to pretty this thing up. It's an old-fashioned slugfest for all!

Before the festival, there is lots of drinking and dancing in traditional Andean horse-riding costumes.  That's just the warmup.  On Christmas morning, everybody who's been mad at anybody since last Christmas parades on down to the local bullfighting ring and starts the smacking. 

According to tradition, most people are inebriated, not to mention drunk. Custom means they hug warmly and then start punching their opponents in the face. There is a referee, who walks around with a whip, lashing out when a fight becomes one-sided. This also serves as a deterrent, lest spectators decide to leave the seating area and join the melee.

They say that this brutality helps to steel the residents for their struggles, living in extreme conditions.  

For one thing, they live above 8000 feet altitude, and that can induce a lot of sickness. Santo Tomas is actually way up there at 12,000 feet. The local diet consists of potatoes and whatever animals wander onto the jagged slope of their town.  Santo Tomas is the capital of Chumbivilcas, one of the poorest states in Peru. They are all but cut off from civilization and government services, With only three officers on the entire Chumbivilcas police force, and the nearest courthouse 12 hours away by car, it's easy to see why Law & Order is carried out on a more personal level. Someone steals your goat, don't call the cops, smack him around on Christmas Day!

With no formal legal system in place, these people have allowed hand-to-hand pugilism to replace police, and the fighting allows for the settlement of wrongs.

"The average villager in this region has basically no access to lawyers or courts, and even if they travel to a place where they do, odds are the ultimate judgment will not be in their favor," according to a law student from Lima who came to observe the goings-on.  "Using violence as a means of solving disputes may seem barbaric to people in the cities, but as you can see, the fighting here is all carefully controlled and the people involved get an immediate and cathartic result."

And when the fights are over, they all have a drink and go on their merry way.

Don't laugh too quickly. Ask any police about how many family gatherings around the holidays here start to look like the final scene of "Rocky" after the egg nog runs out.