Are you constantly broke? Do you want to earn more money? Here’s what to do according to the latest ‘studies’ issued just in time for V-day: kiss your partner goodbye before you leave for work in the morning.
Apparently, people who do so, tend to earn much higher salaries than those who don’t. Reader, such is the power of the kiss.
So seeing as there’s a whiff of lovey-doveyness in the air, and seeing as the average human being spends two weeks of his or her live engaged in a kiss – which at its most passionate burns 26 calories per minute – I’m thinking perhaps today is the perfect opportunity to trace the history of kissing in Malta.
We tend to think kissing is a recent, modern man trait. But no, really we’ve been at it since forever – to be more precise, kissing was first recorded in Indian writings 3,500 years ago.
That’s about the same time that some Maltese prehistoric artists were carving those spiral thingies at the Tarxien temples.
Indeed, here we have the first obvious record of kissing on the islands: the spiral motifs were clearly made by someone deliriously in love after a passionate smooch by the pottery kiln.
After that, apparently there was a huge gap of non-kissing, for a long time.
The era quite possibly coincided with the time when leaders of some religion or other (probably recently dumped) felt the need to label the urge to kiss as an act of weakness.
This became an international phenomenon, and Malta followed suit.
But let’s not blame it all on religious zeal, for by this time the human diet had gotten a bit teeth-rot inducing, and as these were the days before toothpaste and dental floss, kissing must have been a fairly grim affair, anyway.
Our female ancestors found a clever solution: to make it more palatable, young Maltese maids would carry a clove-studded apple when courting, exchanging a bite for a kiss.
The apple helped to clean the suitor’s teeth and the cloves to sweeten his breath. But, alas, the lads were not always co-operative and one suspects it was round about this time the Maltese started indulging in cheek kissing.
In the Middle Ages, the kiss resurfaced again, albeit on the lines of a business transaction. In Europe, given that many men did not know how to read and write, their signature X was kissed to make it legal.
This practice never really took hold in Malta because after a couple of hours (and a sniff of a better deal elsewhere) everybody was keen on finding a loophole: “No! Really, t’was just a peck on your moustache – surely, that doesn’t count as a proper kiss! The deal is off.”
Meanwhile in parts of Japan, Siberia and among the Eskimo culture, rubbing noses was the only kind of kissing that went on. This didn’t catch up here either, because preference was given to another style of kissing, that went on to become a Maltese specialty: butt kissing.
Fast forward to the 20th century, when open-mouth kisses taking place on the Pont sur la Siene in Paris were the talk of Europe. In Malta, sightings of its equivalent were soon reported at the Pont du Chalet in Sliema. Always ever so avant guard there.
Meanwhile in the less sophisticated south, people were still eating each other’s faces.
This Parisian smooch was subsequently picked up by someone in Hollywood keen to turn anything into a quick buck. He probably was a Gozitan emigrant.
And before anyone could pucker their lips, movies started promoting the image of kissing to all the corners of the globe.
The kiss as an affectionate gesture was gone with the wind. Thanks to Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara it had now become an international agent of passion.
In Malta, our local television never really sealed a classic screen kiss. Although, back in the days, much serious under-the-nose nibbling went on in Ipokriti, we never got to see Maltese actors’ lips lock with a romantic punch that made us swoon.
This brings us to the present day. Lip dancing in Malta might be a tad more complex what with all the voluminous, bee-stung lips made of collagen implants.
Perhaps we need to invest in The Art of Kissing, a manual written by Hugh Morris in 1936 which apparently – for I don’t have it – has an entire chapter devoted to ‘How to kiss people with different sizes of mouth’. Erm.
As for the future of the Maltese kiss? I suppose, if we stick to the pre-work morning kiss and throw in a smooch in the eve, the future can only see us living in great luxury.
The Sunday Times - krischetcuti@gmail.com