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In one form or another, kissing has been prevalent since primitive times, but has developed mostly in the West. Among the Greeks and Romans, parents kissed their children, lovers and married persons kissed each other, and so did friends of the same or different sexes. Martial complains in one of his epigrams: "Yet, Linus, thou layest hold on all thou meetest; none can thy clutches miss; but with thy frozen mouth all Rome dost kiss." The early Christians obeyed St. Paul's injunction to "greet one another with a holy kiss" until the symbol of fellowship degenerated sometimes into sexual scandal. In the Middle Ages, knights kissed before doing battle, just as boxers touch gloves. The varieties of kisses are numerous: the kiss of treachery (Judas' example), the Mafia kiss of death, the kiss of reverence with which rabbis don their tallithim and priests their stoles. Children hold out a hurt hand for a kiss "to make it well."
The French, who have had some practice, have turned kissing into a fine social art, although even they are not always sure when or how to do it. The French double kiss is routine, whether on the occasion of being accepted into the Académie Française or greeting a friend. Lately, the French have taken to kissing one another three times, alternately. Sometimes it goes on even longer. Says Régine Temam, a French librarian: "I never know when to stop now, so I just let whoever is doing it decide how long he wants to continue."
Kissing or not kissing can be genetic, but not entirely so. Even the somewhat prim Swiss have begun to kiss socially. Italians are enthusiastic kissers and have been for generations; the same is true of Slavs. Arab men greet one another with kisses, as do Arab women. The British remain reticent about social kissing. The Japanese, along with many other Orientals, regard kissing —at least in public—as a Western custom, highly unsanitary and offensive.
Why is there now such an outbreak of kissing as a social gesture? According to Sociologist Murray Davis, of the University of California at San Diego, "Increased kissing is part of the general inflation of intimate signals. We kiss people we used to hug, hug people we used to shake hands with, and shake hands with people we used to nod to." Not to kiss or hug means one is "not relating." "Isolated individualism is out." says Davis. "Today separations are not allowed. Everyone is expected to kiss everyone else." The human-potential movement has occasionally made a travesty of E.M. Forster's "Only connect!" From the hot tubs of Marin County to the baths of Esalen, the rule prevails: Whoever kisses you, you kiss back, lest you be thought to be uptight. At times, kissing carries a political message. Some feminists kiss other women on the lips in order to prove something about transcending sexuality. American men rarely kiss other men, unless they are father and son, or unless they are homosexual, in which case a public buss on the cheeks or lips is becoming more common.