The Kiss in History...

The kiss is the key to paradise — From the custom of rubbing nose against nose to the modern kiss

Smell me = kiss me!

The ancient poets of Greece described the kiss as the key to paradise. A contemporary poet has said that the kiss was created to be felt and sensed, and not created merely to be sung about. Rarely do we find a poet, from the age of Homer down to our own day, who has not sung of the kiss and described its sweetness, its warmth, and its delight at least once in his verse.

The kiss has passed through many stages, and many developments have come over it in history among the various peoples of the earth... It comes in several kinds: among them the kiss of lust, or unbridled passion, which Faust pressed upon the lips of Marguerite as they burned for kisses; and among them the kiss of deceit, which Judas Iscariot pressed upon the face of his master, Christ the Lord. And whatever the kiss may be, its sound, in the eyes of lovers and the inspired, remains strikingly like the breaking of waves on the small pebbles of the shore.

The ancient Romans divided kisses into three classes: the kiss of friendship, pressed on the cheek; the kiss of tenderness and affection, pressed on the mouth; and the kiss of love and desire, which is the interplay of two mouths in a long, ardent kiss.

In fact, all people have agreed that a kiss pressed on the forehead denotes respect, and one pressed on the cheek bespeaks friendship and affection. Kissing the hand is a mark of veneration and honor, and kissing the foot a mark of submission. And there remains the kiss of love, sincere and insincere alike — the kiss that is exchanged by the lips.

It is reckoned that the modern kiss developed from the custom of rubbing face against face, that custom which the earliest peoples knew and which some of them keep up even today.

Rubbing nose against nose

There is no doubt that the custom of rubbing nose against nose, which we find among some inhabitants of the South Sea islands, and which is the only kind of kissing they have, is derived from rubbing face against face. Eskimo lovers have long practiced this kind of kissing.

The history of kissing by rubbing noses goes back to the year 1950 before Christ. The kissing familiar today did not appear until much later. The Indian kiss traveled, it seems, from India eastward to China, and westward to Persia, Assyria, Syria, Greece, Italy, and the rest of the countries of Europe. We know no reason why this kind of kissing did not enter Egypt; and if the ancient Egyptians did know it, they did not keep it up for long.

Smell me = kiss me

Herodotus, the father of history, relates that the Persians kiss one another on the mouth when they are of one and the same degree or rank. And if they are of differing social degrees, they content themselves with kissing the cheek. To this day the custom of kissing by rubbing noses still prevails in some countries of the Far East, above all in China and India, where it is more widespread than anywhere else. There are the "Hill" tribes of India, whose members say "smell me" instead of "kiss me." So too say the inhabitants of the island of Borneo. And in Malaya the inhabitants greet one another by smelling...

It is one of fate's ironies that the Chinese — among the oldest of the peoples who carried the torch of liberty high to light the darkness of the earth — should retain to this day the method of smelling, which is the original kiss, in place of the modern kiss.

And no wonder: for the Chinese count the modern European kiss trivial, or vulgar, and predatory in character. Mothers in Indochina have grown accustomed to threatening their little ones with kissing them in the European fashion if they do not stop crying!!

In the Japanese language there is no trace whatever of the word kiss or kissing. The whole matter is that the kiss is confined to the family alone: the mother kisses her little ones, and the father his children, from their birth until the day it becomes possible for them to walk by themselves... In Palestine, the kiss that Esau pressed on Jacob's neck as the two embraced developed until it became something like the European kiss. The African tribes do not know the kiss of the whites: one Briton described the fright and agitation that came over an African girl when he kissed her in the English fashion!!

The inhabitants of the island of Madagascar and of the Malay country consider the kiss the sole means of communion between two persons.

Thus we see that the kiss is of ancient stock. Nor is the kiss confined to ordinary or temporal life; it carries over into religious life. Kissing is a familiar custom in religious rites and observances. The priest kisses the child when he has finished baptizing it, and worshipers kiss statues, holy pictures, and icons.

And at the celebration of solemn Mass the priest kisses the veils that cover the statues and pictures of the saints.

There is a kind of plant that was held sacred by the goddesses of beauty, love, and fertility among the ancient Scandinavians, and among the Assyrian Babylonians, or the Neo-Babylonians. It was the custom that a girl whom a young man met beneath this "sacred" plant must not refuse him a kiss. And it was the custom among the Babylonians for a woman, once in her life, to enter the temple of the goddess Mylitta and stand beneath the aforesaid sacred plant and await the first man who came in to her and sought her favor — and she would yield herself to him without condition or restriction...

In the Middle Ages the common people used to kiss the foot of the noble or the feudal chieftain, or the hem of his garment. And this remained the way of the members of the lower and middle classes in England, when they wished to show their esteem and reverence for their temporal and spiritual superiors, until the opening of the eighteenth century, while kissing on the cheeks took place between members of one and the same class. In the New Testament of Holy Scripture we read that Mary Magdalene, that sinful woman, fell at the feet of Jesus and kissed them. As for Samuel, he kissed the cheek of King Saul when he came to greet him. And it is no secret that Christ the Lord himself kissed the feet of his disciples, to set them an example of humility and forbearance. Some followers of the Western Church still kiss the feet of the Pope, the supreme head of the Church, for a blessing, in keeping with the old tradition they inherited along with all else they inherited. And today, when a Pope dies, shoes of red color are placed on his feet for the faithful to kiss.

The ancient Arabs, the Turks, the Persians, and the other Eastern peoples used to kiss the ground in the presence of a chief, a leader, or a prince... Then they gave up this custom by degrees, and took to bowing before the great. It is known of the Buddhists that on their way to "Lhasa," the capital of the land of Tibet and the sacred city to which they make pilgrimage, they press their heads in the dust some thirty thousand times over the last six miles of the road that leads to it.

In these days of ours the handshake has taken the place of kissing the face or the cheek. The knights and contestants of old would kiss one another before beginning a contest; today, the players of racquet-ball (tennis), the boxers, and the rest shake hands just before the match and after it.

Today the Moroccans greet one another with a quick handshake. The common people

of Rome used to show their respect and honor for the emperor by touching the hem of his garment with their hands and then kissing it. And the Turk would shake hands, then kiss his own hand and raise it to his forehead as a mark of reverence.

The religious rites of the pagans among the Arabs and the Greeks required a person to kiss his hand and then raise it toward heaven. The Romans, however, kissed their right hand only, and then raised it in supplication to whatever gods they wished.

Rarely do we notice, today, when we kiss our hand and wave it in farewell to a dear friend, that we are only repeating the very motions the pagans used to perform for their gods in their worship... And the priest's raising of his hand at consecration and baptism, the teacher's raising of his hand — or rather his forefinger — to quell the pupils' din, the orator's raising of his hand to silence the crowd, and the policeman's to direct the traffic — all are of this same kind.

And from this pagan custom branched the custom of touching the sacred books with the hand while swearing an oath, and then kissing the hand, in the Middle Ages; and this is still the custom followed to this very day in the courts when witnesses are sworn.

As for the first men of the Church, they forbade kissing between the two sexes, and issued decrees banning this kind of kissing under pain of punishment. A man was permitted only to kiss the rougher sex, and women were permitted to kiss the daughters of their own sex. Saint Paul had, at the very outset, permitted the exchange of greetings by means of the "holy kiss."

In the Cathedral of Saint Peter in Rome there stands a bronze statue of Saint Peter, which has been there since the fifth century after Christ. The kisses of worshipers have worn away the greater part of its right foot. How great a sacrifice! And how many living human cells did the disappearance of the greater part of the saint's bronze foot require!!

Such is the history of the kiss — ponder it!