The Austrian traditions surrounding Krampus the Christmas demon are, to American eyes, pretty bizarre. Instead of the vanilla tale of jolly old Saint Nick just wandering around doling out toys of adoring little tykes, here Santa is joined by the demon Krampus who takes the naughty kids with him back to Hell (or something like that). Sorta evens things out, I suppose. Part of the tradition seems to be public festivals where people dress up like demons and act out a bit. But it seems that they’ve been acting especially enthusiastic of late:
The initial reporting seems to be that these demonic cosplayers are just getting somewhat out of hand. As is the way of things, especially things written in weird alien languages like Italian, the story seems to grow in the telling, so that now it seems to be that what happened is that migrant colonizers in Austria took offense to Austrian tradition, tried to interfere, and got a wholloping for their troubles. The initial tale is just “oy”-worth bad behavior; it becomes feel-good rah-rah later, and quite likely inaccurate.
The later version of the tale is certainly the preferable one, as it involves heroics and Europeans finally standing up for themselves. But I suspect that’s not actually what happened.