CEREMONIAL KISSING

Southland Times, Issue 19224, 14 May 1921, Page 6

CEREMONIAL KISSING

ABOLISHED LN FRANCE. SOME ANCIENT KISSING CUSTOMS. President Millerand, of France, inaugurated with the new year an epochmaking and revolutionary reform, which is of a nature to commend itself to the Englishspeaking people in all corners of the world. For he decreed the abolition of the ceremonial kiss as part and parcel of official etiquette. Until this innovation it has been incumbent upon the Chief Executive to bestow a kiss upon every man whom he invests with the Order of the legion of honour, upon the prize winners at the scholastic commencement exercises at which he may be present, upon the girls and young women who present him with flowers at public receptions, and upon the small boys who address to him verses of welcome. He is supposed to embrace foreign royal personages whom he may visit, or entertain in his official capacity. He is even expected to impress a chaste salute upon the cheeks of any pot-bellied Mayor or vinegar-faced and attenuated provincial dignitary who may declaim from typewritten notes a patriotic oration, the kiss being supposed to constitute a recognition of the sentiments enunciated, rather than a tribute to the doubtful pulchritude of the speaker. Although only a few months have elapsed since the elevation of Alexandre Millerand to the presidency of the republic, he been required by traditional and time-hon-oured rules of etiquette relating to his high office to bestow many thousands of ceremonial kisses, mostly upon the uninviting bearded and unbearded cheeks of members of the masculine persuasion. He does not like it. He has shown no hesitation about his distaste for this purely ceremonial form ot osculation. He has, indeed, declined to adhere apy longer to the custom. He has decreed its abolition, and henceforth he will give an expression of his thanks, of his good will and of his regard by means of a good, honest, wholesome and manly handshake in lieu of a kiss. Edward VII. was more fortunate. He had his way, and on the occasion of his coronation, he studiously refrained from kissing either the peers or the bishops, and his son and successor, King George the V. followed his example ten years ago, on the occasion of his coronation in 'Westminster Abbey.

There are certain forms of ceremonial kiss, however, which neither the present ruler of Great Britain nor yet the late King ever attempted to abolish. Thus archbishops and bishops of the Church of England, Ambassadors and Ministers plenipotentiary, Cabinet officers and the great dignitaries of the Court and the State kiss the hand of the sovereign at the audience in which be confers on them their appointment, and the fact that they have “kissed hands on appointment” is always recorded in the royal court .circular, and in the ancient London “Gazette.” George IV. protested against the kissing, but was obliged to give way to the obligations of etiquette and of ancient traditions. His successor, William IV., who was sufficiently eccentric to have received the sobriquet of “Silly Billy” from his irreverent subjects entertained an intense prejudice, amounting to an idiosyncrasy, against the entire episcopal bench. He loudly proclaimed that while it was all very well to kiss the temporal peers, he strongly objected to kissing the bishops. He, too, had to yield, and contemporary records relate that the grimaces which he made on kissing the two primates and the bishops were a sore trial to the gravity of all present. Ceremonial kissing dates back from the earliest times. Long prior to the Christian era those initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries kissed each other in token of brotherhood and of equal kno'wledge, and so did the early Christians at the agapes, or love feasts. But in the fourth century the council of Carthage found it necessary to forbid all religious or ceremonial kissing especially osculation in church because it tended to “unedifying inuecorum.” Indeed, there are some old Latan writings which would seem to indicate that the smacks were too loud, something like Petruccio’s lines, when he: “Kissed her lips with such a clamorous smack That at the parting all the church did echo.” We know that the old Romans kissed, not however, for the sake of love, but to find out “if the wife had been drinking wine in the master’s absence." And it is on. record that 4he ancient Greeks made their wives eat onions whenever they were going from home, realising that the kiss of Venus herself would be distasteful with a flavour of garlic hanging abaut her delicate lips.