A kiss at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve is a tradition which has been observed across cultures and countries for decades, but the origins of the New Year’s kiss remain somewhat a mystery
A passionate New Year’s kiss at the turn of a year is a tradition which has been observed across cultures and countries for decades. Despite how widespread the festive tradition is, the origins of why and when people started it is shrouded in mystery.
While the exact beginnings of giving someone a kiss the moment the clocks strikes 12 is unclear, the practice is often linked to two winter festivals, Saturnalia, an ancient Roman pagan holiday, and Hogmanay, a Viking tradition still observed on New Year’s in Scotland.
Saturnalia, an annual celebration during the winter solstice, was the biggest bash of the year and naturally involved public inebriation. This aspect somehow evolved into the (probably accurate) assumption that kissing was part of the festivities.
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Saturnalia took place between December 17 and 23, leading experts to believe this is how the New Year’s kiss tradition began. Hogmanay, a Viking custom still observed in Scotland, at least includes a New Year’s kiss. But these kisses were given out to greet both strangers and friends, accompanied by wishes for a prosperous New Year.
Christina Fitzgerald, a folklore expert and professor of English literature at the University of Toledo, Ohio, has revealed where the earliest mention of a potential New years kiss appeared in fiction. The Professor told Reader’s Digest in “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” – a late-14th century Arthurian legend poem – had one of the earliest references to the idea of a New Year’s kiss in in writing.
During the epic a passage if found in a verse describing a party where the women are set to present “gifts” to the men. Fitzgerald noted it’s commonly understood that the gifts represent kisses in the Arthurian legend. Folklore expert and English professor Daniel Compora at the University of Toledo also explained why the custom of kissing at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s has captured people’s imaginations.
Compora said the New Year’s kiss forms part of both English and German folklore, which “indicate that whoever a person is with at midnight portends what type of luck they will have for the rest of the year.”
He added said: “Superstitions usually imply some element of cause and effect. If people truly believed that kissing someone could prevent a year of loneliness, it would constitute superstitious behaviour.”
Compora went on to say that today a New Year’s kiss would be better described as a tradition, since it’s a practice “passed down generationally and practiced widely within a society” rather than a conviction that one action will trigger another. The professor added: “Quite honestly, it sounds like an excuse to kiss people who may not otherwise allow you to do so.”
