13th February: Kiss Day

Kiss day (except in South Korea where they celebrate this in June) - Studies have shown that people have much more vivid memories of their first kiss than they do about the first time they have sex. Here are some fascinating facts about kissing.

1. The word “Kiss” is from the Old English cyssan, which in turn comes from the proto-Germanic kussijanan or kuss - probably based on the sound of a kiss. The study of kissing is called philematology. while someone who studies kissing is called an osculologist. Why not a philametologist? I don't know. The fear of kissing is philemaphobia, most common among inexperienced kissers.
2. In some people the fear may originate from the fact that when two people kiss, they exchange between 10 million and 1 billion Bacteria. This isn't necessarily a bad thing - it helps boost the human immune system and the saliva produced is good for the teeth.
3. The average person spends at least two weeks of their life kissing.
4. The first mention of a kiss in writing is in Sanskrit texts dating back to 1500 B.C. The first kiss on screen was shot in 1896 by the Edison Company. The film was 30 seconds long and consisted entirely of a close up of a man and a woman kissing. The first on-screen kiss between two members of the same sex was in Cecil B. DeMille’s 1922 film Manslaughter. The film with the most kisses is Don Juan (1926) in which John Barrymore and Mary Astor share 127 kisses. The film with the longest kiss is Andy Warhol’s 1963 film, Kiss. Kissing in films was seriously restricted by something called the Hay's Code, which laid out strict rules about kissing in American films. The people kissing must not be horizontal; at least one had to be sitting or standing. Married couples in films must sleep in twin beds. If kissing on one of the beds occurred, at least one of the actors had to have a foot on the floor. There was also a strict time limit. It was possible to get around that one, as Alfred Hitchcock directed Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant to repeatedly kiss briefly while Grant spoke on the telephone in the 1946 film Notorious. They counted each as a separate kiss, and it certainly had an effect. Polls consistently list this kiss as one of the sexiest kisses in cinematic history.
5. According to Guinness World Records, the longest-lasting kiss ever was between Ekkachai and Laksana Tiranarat of Thailand, which lasted 58 hours, 35 minutes and 58 seconds.
6. About two thirds of people tilt their heads to the right when they lean in for a kiss. Scientists speculate that a person's preference in this regard starts in the womb.
7. Why do we sign letters with "X" denoting a kiss? The theory is that it dates back to when most people couldn't read or write and would sign documents with an X, which was an abbreviation of the word "Christ" (as in "Xmas"). Many people would kiss their mark as a sign of reverence and in time the X itself came to mean a kiss. A kiss as a way to seal a contract was also a thing in ancient times, and since back then a marriage was little more than a business deal, that's why couples kiss at the end of their wedding.
8. Humans aren't the only animals which kiss one another. Cows, puffins, Squirrels and even Snails kiss, although it's usually little more than touching faces. Chimpanzees are the only animals whose kisses resemble a human kiss. It seems likely there's an evolutionary reason for kissing. Some say it started when mothers passed chewed up food to their offspring mouth to mouth during weaning or that it was a way for prospective partners to check compatibility by tasting each other's saliva. The fact that human Brains have special neurons to help couples find each other's lips in the dark is further evidence for the importance of kissing.
9. That said, not all cultures kiss on the lips. In the Trobriand Islands lovers will go through several phases of sucking and biting with the climax being biting off each other’s eyelashes. In fact, in the South Pacific, short eyelashes are a status symbol. Inuits rubbed noses and smelled each other's cheeks. Some cultures in the Middle East and Asia still look down on kissing in public, although many non-kissing cultures soon caught on when they were exposed to western culture.
10. The muscle mostly used in kissing is the orbicularis oris (the muscle around the mouth). One kiss, however, uses 146 muscles in total, including 34 facial muscles and 112 postural muscles.

See Also

Quotes about kissing.

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