Why do we have the New Year’s Kiss?

New Years Eve Kiss hat

You’re at a New Year’s Eve Party about to ring in the New Year. It’s almost midnight. You look around for who you’ll be kissing at midnight… but wait! Why do we have this tradition of kissing someone at midnight anyway?

The Origins of the New Year Kiss
The tradition of kissing at midnight is a tradition borrowed from the Roman era, from the Winter Solstice festival of Saturnalia.

Not only is Saturnalia behind this New Year’s Eve tradition, but it is also responsible for many of our Christmas traditions (written about here), including the customs of kissing under the mistletoe, and putting up Christmas wreaths and trees.


But why do we kiss at midnight? What does the kiss represent?
Some say the New Year Kiss represented an eradication and purification of evil spirits from the year that’s just gone, setting you in good stead for a fresh new year.

In more modern times further superstitions arose around the New Year kiss; the main superstition being that this kiss would set the tone of your coming year.

Related Posts
- Why do we sing Auld Lang Syne on New Year’s Eve?
- Why do we have these Unusual New Year Traditions from Around the World?

Related Products

The Kiss speckcase Bonne Annee mug Happy New Year! card Pink LIps sticker

This entry was posted in Culture, Non-religious Holidays & Festivals and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>