Ahrcanum

Forget about kissing with passion.  The kiss has gone by the affectionate wayside along with hand shaking to prevent the spread of H1N1 Swine Flu and other contagious maladies.

Like many foreign countries the French, with their variety of cultural traditions some explained here, http://www.transitionsabroad.com/publications/magazine/0505/working_and_living_do_and_donts_in_france.shtml  have  their traditional cheek-to-cheek kiss or  “la bise.”  La bise has been discouraged so for health reasons due to the Swine H1N1 Flu. 

“Our behaviour has already changed,” said Frédéric Chapelle, a psychiatrist.

“It might seem excessive, but given that it might knock out half the population, fear of others will set in and people will say if I kiss my colleague, I might catch it,” she told Le Parisien.

Nathalie, a secretary in Nanterre, west of Paris, said old habits are proving hard to change. “For the first time I recoiled when a colleague who had come back from holiday in Reunion island came to give me a kiss. She took it badly,” she said. Employees are being asked to respect a one-yard person-to-person buffer zone.  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/6155768/France-facing-la-bise-ban-over-swine-flu-fears.html

In Italy, a phial of what local Roman Catholics believe is the blood of Saint Gennaro at the Duomo in Naplesis commonly kissed.  Fear of H1N1 flu stopped devout Neapolitans from performing the time-honoured ritual of kissing the blood of their patron Saint Gennaro during this weeks festival. The decision to forbid kissing of the glass phial containing the saint’s blood was taken reluctantly by ecclesiastical and city authorities on Monday, and has brought protests from local politicians.  http://www.ottawacitizen.com/story_print.html?id=1971997&sponsor=

10 unexpected, humorous cultural results of the Swine Flu can be found here- http://www.scriptoriumdaily.com/2009/05/04/ten-unexpected-cultural-results-of-swine-flu/

Fabulous kissing photos here at-http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/09/a_collection_of_kisses.html

Kiss me you fool. Open wide, say ahhh and check out these posts on the A/H1N1 Swine Flu from Ahrcanum, where the conspiracy spreads as fast as the virus itself .  Our disclaimer-Swine Flu Conspiracy theory can sometimes be triggered by real world events.  https://ahrcanum.wordpress.com/swine-flu-report/  Subscribe via RSS for more updates.