The International Kiss Day is celebrated on April 13 of each year, a date that emerged thanks to the longest kiss in history, which lasted 58 hours and was played by a Thai couple during a contest.
The couple, in this way, broke their own record of 46 consecutive hours, achieved on April 13 of the previous year.
In many cities, various types of contests are organized this day in which participants must establish kissing records.
How the kiss day celebration start?
The idea behind the International Kiss Day is to remind people of the simple pleasure associated with kissing for the kiss itself, unlike kissing as a mere social formality or as a prelude to sexual intercourse or other activities.
Kissing can be a joyful and pleasurable experience on its own. It is an expression of intimacy.
It has also worked as a counterbalance to prohibitions that exist in some cities and in some countries that prevent people from kissing or even hugging themselves.
The International Kiss Day is not as commercial as Valentine’s Day (day of love and the friendship).
Curious facts about kissing
1) According to a new anthropological study, half of the world doesn’t think kissing is romantic.
A majority of the world’s 168 countries do not engage in “romantic-sexual kissing.”
While there was evidence of romantic kissing in 77 countries, the remaining 91 (aka 54 percent) don’t kiss in a romantic way.
Romantic kissing is common in most cultures in regions like North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
But not if you venture to Central and South America or sub-Saharan Africa, it is noted that “cultural repression” wasn’t to blame for the lack of sexual kissing in certain parts of the world.
Basically, the high volume of kissing we see in Western media may cause us to wrongly assume that it is something innate in all humans, when in fact, it’s not at all.
2) The average amount of time a person spends kissing is 20,160 minutes, which comes out to two full weeks of their lives.
3) Women will kiss 16 other potential love partners on average before finding the ideal partner, and Men the number is 17.
4) Kissing relieves stress: A 2009 study found that, in both sexes, kissing releases chemicals that ease stress hormones.
After kissing for 15 minutes, people’s cortisol levels dropped, which is an indication that their stress levels declined.
The same study measured oxytocin levels — which affect feelings of bonding — but there was some gender disparity there.
Men had higher levels of oxytocin levels after kissing, while women’s levels were lower.
So kissing might be more likely to make men feel a stronger bond with their partners, but the same apparently can’t always be said for women.
