Austria's traditional Christmas devils have been given police clearance to carry on smacking people's back-sides.
Locals in towns across the country dress up as either St Nicholas, handing out sweets to the good, or as the devil, handing out beatings to the bad.
And people who are whacked by the revellers in the run up to Christmas have no cause to complain, say police.
Vienna police spokesman Gerhard Schoenberg said: "Dressing up is part of our tradition and being smacked on the bottom by the devils is all part of the fun.
"Only if the beatings turn particularly violent and a person is left injured can any action be taken."
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This would present quite a dilemma for our Supreme Court. What about those Christmas traditions that like to smack genitals (I'm sure there's one out there)? Would we need a one-to-one buttocks-to-genital rap ratio?
