“a kiss is just a kiss…”

Pucker up and celebrate International Kissing Day

Grab your partner and kiss away

Madison Choudhry, Special to The Weekly Journal

There 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 hearing, “you may now kiss the bride,” a kiss seems to mark a momentous occasion. A kiss is an occasion in itself. So much so, that it deserved an international day.

Todays’ society has embraced 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 a kiss as to say: “Hello, how are you?” All around the world a kiss is a reason to pause, pull you in and recognize each other’s presence.

One merely needs to take a moment to find a reference to kissing in our culture. From classic movies, to song lyrics, or a poem written long ago. Kisses are described everywhere. That being said, the history of the kiss is clouded and the exact origins are unknown.

Vaughn Bryant an anthropologist from Texas A&M University credits the people of India with demonstrating the practice to ancient Roman soldiers, who in turn soon became, “devote ‘kissing’ missionaries.” Having learned this new alluring act, the Roman soldiers began to spread kisses all around Europe and parts of North Africa.

For the Romans, there were different types of kisses, each carrying their own assigned meaning. There was the osculum, a kiss of friendship which was often given as a peck on the cheek. There was the basium, a slightly more loving lips-to-lips kiss. And, finally, the savium, a kiss of deep passion. So much passion was involved in a savium that, “if a virgin girl were kissed with a savium kiss in public, she could demand to be awarded full marriage rights from the man,” Bryant explained.

The popularity of kissing came to a halt with the Great Plague of 1665 (the bubonic plague). The greeting was replaced instead with a bow, a curtsy or the tipping of one’s hat. The practice would make a slow and gradual come back in the 1760’s with the industrial revolution when the quick kiss of the hand became popular.

It would be 1896, before a silent film called, “The Kiss”, would show for the first time two actor repeatedly kissing on screen. With a review from a local newspaper saying, “The spectacle of the prolonged pasturing on each other’s lips was beastly enough in life size on the stage, but magnified to gargantuan proportions and repeated three times over –it is absolutely disgusting.”

The acceptance of the kiss has come a long way since then. Today, people merely blink an eye at witnessing a kiss in public. It even became a

Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the wind.

In one kiss, you’ll know Rick and Ilsa in Casablanca. all I haven’t said. Pablo Neruda, Chilean poet subject of study by German neuroscientist Onur Güntürkün, who spent two years around airports, railway stations, parks and beaches, watching people kissing. In his observations he found there were 124 kinds of valid kisses, a far stretch from the three the Lady and Tramp in Lady and the Tramp. Roman soldiers, In fact, Romans recorded. Today’s society finds the kiss to be welcoming and loving, and something to be desired. As if it having learned needed any more reasons, the the kiss from added health benefits of the kiss Indian people, cannot be ignored. The chemicals soon became, a kiss induces –oxytocin, “devoted ‘kissing’ dopamine and serotonin– flood missionaries.” the brain creating a sense of euphoria, which encourages feelings of affection and a strong sense of bonding with your Jack and Rose in Titanic. partner. Not to mention the lowering of the stress hormone cortisol. If a kiss can say so much when words seem to fall short, perhaps Chilean poet Pablo Neruda put it best when he said: “In one kiss, you’ll know all I haven’t said.” It is the connection that we search for. And that is the connection we celebrate on July 6th.