A bas les bisous!

Down with the kisses!

Last night I was bragging to my friend on Facebook chat that France was still "swine" flu-free. Not an hour passed when Radio France reported on their evening broadcast that two French young adults had been recently hospitalized in Paris after the discovery that they'd contracted the rare strain of Influena A. Then came the roundup of public service announcements detailing cautionary steps, recommended by doctors, that we should all take to contain the potentially deadly virus. Among them was to wash our hands incessantly, avoid touching anything in the metro, avoid needless hand-shaking, and, my favorite, the suspension of bisous.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Mediterranean customary greeting of bisous, it consists of swapping alternating kisses on each cheek with whom you're familiar and presumably on good terms (family, friends, and close acquaintances). As a general rule, the further south you travel in France, the more bisous you're expected to exchange upon encountering your acquaintance. In Paris, I've never given more than two bisous, and reflexively I've never received it. But as my friend teaching in the south-central region of Auvergne will tell you, up to four bisous (two on each cheek) may be exchanged depending on the circumstances, and never less than three. For you anthropologists, I have my own theory that the number of bisous given corresponds to the level of Latin and/or Anglo-Saxon influence. The further north you travel in France, the more Anglo-Saxon the culture, and consequently the less intimate are the greetings.

So you can imagine the joy of a purely Anglicized and cold American like me upon learning that bisous are even temporarily suspended. For whenever I'm made to exchange bisous, my pseudo-Puritan nerves become taut with anxiety and subdued repulsion, yet I acclamate nonetheless. If I can save the world from a deadly virus through an old-fashioned hug, sign me up.