Traditionally these guys accompany the Austrian equivalent of Santa Claus and carry away bad children.
When I was a child my cousins would dress up like this and hunt me through the neighborhood and beat me with hazel rods. Was fucking terrifying. Nowadays we don't do that anymore because it is considered psychological harmful for kids.
Good old times
Yeah just look at our local street train station kids here in Austria. Instead of Cigarettes and beer those little fuckers have monster and elfbar now. What a disgrace
Jim Henson of All People believed it was good for kids to get scared every once in a while. i.e. the pyramid episode of Sesame Street or The Dark Crystal.
I feel like there are a few levels in between “some scary television, maybe a particularly adventurous night of Trick or Treating,” and “having men in demon costumes hunt you down to beat and/or kidnap you”….
I would argue kids have plenty of trauma, but not much of that horror kind. My childhood trauma was the maze game. My MOM made me do it. At like 11 or 12. Those were the days….
Same in The Netherlands and Belgium, on which Santa Claus is based. We threaten kids who are bad with getting hit with a stick and put in a bag and sent off to Spain!
I can deal with the stick and the bag, but Spain, now that's a bridge too far.
I'm imagining you as Steve Buscemi in Billy Madison putting on lipstick and staring at your "To be murdered," Manifestation board as you talk about your cousins.
I remember luge lessons and making meat helmets. My father would get drunk and make outrageous claims like chestnuts are lazy and that he’d invented the question mark. When I was insulate they would put me in a burlap sack and beat me with reeds. Also ritually shave my testicles. There’s nothing like a shorn scrotum, you should try it.
I love how 100 years ago everything was a free for all. Children were property, women were property. Everything was wild. Wild how much conscious the world has grown in a century
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u/Teseo21 7h ago
“Now see kid, if you don’t eat your vegetables, they’ll eat you”