A Kiss is just a Kiss, or is it?
Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2005 12:19 pm
Kissing has been with us since the dawn of time and, despite the fact that there is so much etiquette and ceremony surrounding it, a kiss is still just as likely to cause offence as it is pleasure.
The meeting of the lips can have social,sexual,religious,political and ceremonial connotations. Get it right and it can be heaven, get it wrong and you'll know all about it.
From affection, love, respect, obedience,tenderness, agreement and reverence it seems most of our feelings can be sealed with a kiss.
And the argument as to where it all might have started is as varied as the many ways in which kisses themselves can be planted.
Some say that on a practical level it goes back to our very early ancestry, where mothers chewed food for their infants and passed it to them by mouth to mouth. The assumption here is that touching lips was associated with caring, nurturing and feelings of maternal love.
Freud reckoned that the erotic kiss was just an attempt to return to security of the mother's breast. So it could be argued that in many ways our displays of affection harp right back to early nutrition when we were but helpless little things.
In the culture of the Indians, it was believed that the exhaled breath was part of the spirit, and when two people brought their mouths together it symbolised the joining of their inner beings.
And in the sixth century in France every dance was ended in a kiss. Apparently, Russia was the first to incorporate the kiss into the marriage ceremony, where a matrimonial promise was sealed with a kiss.
The Romans kissed to greet each other, and same-sex kissing on meeting is still more the norm in Europe, than in the US, Britain or Ireland, except at soccer matches of course:wah:
The Kiss has been explored in its historic and evolutionary context in a new book ''The Kiss in History'',by Karen Harvey, published by Manchester University Press.
The meeting of the lips can have social,sexual,religious,political and ceremonial connotations. Get it right and it can be heaven, get it wrong and you'll know all about it.
From affection, love, respect, obedience,tenderness, agreement and reverence it seems most of our feelings can be sealed with a kiss.
And the argument as to where it all might have started is as varied as the many ways in which kisses themselves can be planted.
Some say that on a practical level it goes back to our very early ancestry, where mothers chewed food for their infants and passed it to them by mouth to mouth. The assumption here is that touching lips was associated with caring, nurturing and feelings of maternal love.
Freud reckoned that the erotic kiss was just an attempt to return to security of the mother's breast. So it could be argued that in many ways our displays of affection harp right back to early nutrition when we were but helpless little things.
In the culture of the Indians, it was believed that the exhaled breath was part of the spirit, and when two people brought their mouths together it symbolised the joining of their inner beings.
And in the sixth century in France every dance was ended in a kiss. Apparently, Russia was the first to incorporate the kiss into the marriage ceremony, where a matrimonial promise was sealed with a kiss.
The Romans kissed to greet each other, and same-sex kissing on meeting is still more the norm in Europe, than in the US, Britain or Ireland, except at soccer matches of course:wah:
The Kiss has been explored in its historic and evolutionary context in a new book ''The Kiss in History'',by Karen Harvey, published by Manchester University Press.
