Peru's Takanakuy Festival Is A Unique Christmas Tradition (VIDEO)

A new travel video shows the intriguing, colorful and rarely seen Peruvian festival of Takanakuy, in which the town of Santo Tomas hosts a week-long parade capped with a town-wide brawl on Christmas Day.

Throughout the Vice video, host Thomas Morton brings some sharp perspective, effortlessly blending information about the Peruvian province of Chumbivilcas with wisecracks about the utter foreignness of the landscape in which he finds himself. (For example, he describes Takanakuy as "like Yom Kippur but bloodier.")

Joining the locals for swigs of beer in the street, dressing up in local costume and having fireworks thrown into his hotel room (yes, really), Morton does his best to blend in with the macho Peruvians he encounters, while also interviewing local author and indigenous-rights activist Victor Laime Mantilla.

The bare-knuckle boxing matches are certainly violent, but amateur officials use whips to keep the crowds in check on Christmas Day. Which is why Morton goes to another town, Llique, for an even more violent Takanakuy the very next day.

Watch what he finds -- and how he fares in the ring -- in the video.