A kiss isn't just a kiss 

Romantic lips-to-lips kissing is actually not that universal, with only 46 percent of societies practicing it in a survey of 168 modern cultures worldwide, based on research by Dr. Troels Arboll of the University of Copenhagen and Dr. Sophie Rasmussen of Oxford University. Many cultures shun lip kissing. In the 1400s, when Europeans embarked on voyages of exploration, puckering attempts by conquistadors would be met by natives with no emotion at all, while others fled in terror. The researchers found that it is less predominant in foraging communities and more likely to be found in societies that have distinct social classes, with more complex societies likely to kiss in this manner.

It cannot be verified when humans first employed mouth-to-mouth contact for romance but it must have evolved organically in different locations. Findings in the journal Science reveal that these types of kisses were inscribed in Mesopotamian tablets dating to 2500 BC. Previously, the oldest recorded evidence was attributed to the Vedas, Indian scriptural texts that date back to 1500 BC and are foundational to Hinduism. Erotic kissing can also be found in another ancient Indian text—the Kama Sutra guide to sexual pleasure dating to the 3rd century AD.

In pre-colonial Philippines, Filipinos kissed with their noses, something common to the region especially among Austronesians. Linguistically around the world, verbs for kissing are often related to smelling. Kissing, in fact, is still closely associated with sniffing to this day. This is also apparent even with non-romantic kisses—the way a grandparent will sniff a grandchild with affection during or in lieu of the kiss, for instance.

Cultures that do not lock lips utilize the sense of smell as well as other ways to be intimate. In the Malay kiss, women would squat on the ground while men hovered above them, both taking quick sniffs of each other. On the Trobriand Islands, off the coast of Papua New Guinea, lovers kiss by sitting face to face and nibbling at each other’s eyelashes. Whether with locked lips or through sniffing, the point is to share close, intimate information that leads to ideal mate selection, just like our closest relatives in the animal kingdom do. In the case of bonobo apes, they kiss on the lips like humans—for sex play, comfort, socializing and even after a fight to kiss and make up. Others may have a stronger sense of smell and can select a potential partner from a distance.

Some anthropologists believe that kissing is innate, at least the non-romantic type—observing forms of kissing like licking and nuzzling common to mammals like cats, dogs, elephants and apes. Romantic kissing may have evolved out of this more mammalian kissing behavior. As children, we first experience love from our parents through kisses before we redirect this behavior to our lovers as adults.

As societies became more sophisticated, kisses have evolved with different rituals and meanings. In the Middle Ages, equals kissed on the lips while kissing the hem of a garment and foot-kissing was for the lowest of the low. By the late 1600s, with plagues sweeping the continent, lip kissing was replaced by a new form of etiquette: gentlemen doffing their hats, ladies curtsying. The handshake emerged from this time, evolving from the respectful kiss on the back of a superior’s hand which also developed into the kissing of a lady’s hand by gentlemen as a respectful way of greeting. This is similar to our “mano po” tradition of lifting the hand of our elders to our foreheads as a sign of respect. The Visayans call it amin and the Kapampangans call it siklod. Mano may be Spanish but the gesture predates the colonial era, with links to practices of our Southeast Asian neighbors like Indonesia and Malaysia where it is called salim and salam respectively.

From the Spaniards we have adopted beso-beso or kissing cheek to cheek for relatives and friends. It’s a common practice on the continent, with different variations like the French faire la bise with its own set of rules, like the number of kisses and from right to left or left to right depending on the region. It has also evolved into the air kiss that has become de rigueur, and even a tad insincere, for the fashion set.

Just as it is a sign of friendship, the kiss can also be a sign of betrayal just like in the Gospel where Judas betrays Jesus by identifying him with a kiss so that armed men can arrest him. This Halik ni Hudas is ingrained in our Catholic upbringing, and is immortalized in the 1955 sculpture of our National Artist, Napoleon Abueva, just as it appears in Western art like in Giotto’s 1305 fresco in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Italy. It has also been used in films like The Godfather II where Al Pacino’s character gives his brother Fredo the “kiss of death” for betraying him.

Although Philippine society was liberated with the influx of Hollywood films that had gratuitous kissing, this took some time since Spanish colonial morality was still predominant. Religious films were popular during the early years of Philippine cinema until around 1926 when the first kissing scene was featured between Luis Tuason and Isabel Cooper in Tatlong Hambog. It would be commonplace thereafter with no issue until 1971 when the first kiss between men, Eddie Garcia as the closeted married Don Benito and his driver Mario O’Hara as Diego, hit the Philippine screen in Lino Brocka’s Tubog Sa Ginto.

A kiss between men, but more acceptable in public at that time, was the socialist fraternal one which leaders of communist states used to greet one another, with the most famous between the Soviet Union’s Leonid Brezhnev and East Germany’s Erich Honecher kissing on the mouth in 1979. Another famous encounter during the Cold War was when Chairman Mao Tse Tung kissed the hand of First Lady Imelda Marcos in reciprocation for her kissing his when she was an envoy for bilateral relations.

A more controversial incident was when former president Rodrigo Duterte asked for a kiss from a married Filipina OFW during a meet-and-greet in South Korea in 2018, something he dismissed as a gimmick to entertain supporters but was labeled by critics as “sexist and a grave abuse of authority.” Gimmick or otherwise, a kiss, after all, is never really just a kiss.