15
/ Wednesday, July 6, 2022
Pucker up and celebrate
International Kissing Day Grab your partner and kiss away
T
Madison Choudhry, Special to The Weekly Journal
here are very few things that are as innocent, as salacious, and as romantic as a kiss. From the utterly terrifying moments of your first kiss, to the tender moment of Rhett Butler hearing, “you may now kiss the and bride,” a kiss seems to mark Scarlett a momentous occasion. A O’Hara kiss is an occasion in itself. So in Gone much so, that it deserved an with international day. the Todays’ society has embraced wind. the concept of the kiss as a symbol of affection. Here in Puerto Rico a kiss on the cheek is a common greeting. We give kissed with a savium kiss in public, a kiss as to say: “Hello, how are she could demand to be awarded full you?” All around the world a kiss marriage rights from the man,” Bryant is a reason to pause, pull you explained. in and recognize each other’s The popularity of kissing came to presence. a halt with the Great Plague of 1665 One merely needs to take Rick and Ilsa in Casablanca. (the bubonic plague). The greeting a moment to find a reference Pablo Neruda, Chilean poet was replaced instead with a bow, to kissing in our culture. From a curtsy or the tipping of one’s hat. classic movies, to song lyrics, or subject of study by German neuroscientist Onur The practice would make a slow and a poem written long ago. Kisses Güntürkün, who spent two years around airports, gradual come back in the 1760’s are described everywhere. That railway stations, parks and beaches, watching with the industrial revolution when being said, the history of the people kissing. In his observations he found there the quick kiss of the hand became kiss is clouded and the exact were 124 kinds of valid kisses, popular. origins are unknown. a far stretch from the three the It would be Vaughn Bryant an Romans recorded. 1896, before a anthropologist from Texas A&M Today’s society finds the kiss silent film called, University credits the people Lady and Tramp in Lady and to be welcoming and loving, and “The Kiss”, would of India with demonstrating the Tramp. something to be desired. As if it show for the first the practice to ancient Roman Roman soldiers, needed any more reasons, the time two actor soldiers, who in turn soon having learned added health benefits of the kiss repeatedly kissing became, “devote ‘kissing’ the kiss from cannot be ignored. The chemicals on screen. With a missionaries.” Having learned Indian people, a kiss induces –oxytocin, review from a local this new alluring act, the Roman soon became, dopamine and serotonin– flood newspaper saying, soldiers began to spread kisses “devoted ‘kissing’ the brain creating a sense of “The spectacle all around Europe and parts of missionaries.” euphoria, which encourages of the prolonged North Africa. feelings of affection and a strong pasturing on each For the Romans, there were sense of bonding with your other’s lips was different types of kisses, each partner. Not to mention the beastly enough in carrying their own assigned Jack and Rose in Titanic. life size on the stage, but magnified to lowering of the stress hormone cortisol. meaning. There was the If a kiss can say so much when words seem to gargantuan proportions and repeated osculum, a kiss of friendship fall short, perhaps Chilean poet Pablo Neruda put three times over –it is absolutely which was often given as a peck it best when he said: “In one kiss, you’ll know all I disgusting.” on the cheek. There was the basium, a slightly haven’t said.” It is the connection that we search The acceptance of the kiss has come a long more loving lips-to-lips kiss. And, finally, the for. And that is the connection we celebrate on way since then. Today, people merely blink an eye savium, a kiss of deep passion. So much passion at witnessing a kiss in public. It even became a was involved in a savium that, “if a virgin girl were July 6th.
In one kiss, you’ll know all I haven’t said.
In fact,
