Midnight kiss: the real reason why we kiss at midnight on New Year’s Eve

From folklore to the ancient Romans, this is the origin of the much-hyped New Years kiss
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If you were a teen in the early ‘00s, then you probably watched Californian teen drama, The O.C.

And if The O.C was on your repertoire, then the scene where Ryan races the clock to kiss Marissa at midnight on New Year’s Eve is about as iconic as a television scene can get.

But when did New Year’s Eve kisses become the norm and why do people kiss on New Year’s Eve?

No doubt popular culture has had a large say in it, with movies like When Harry Met Sally hinging on that New Year’s Eve kiss - but the phenomenon actually dates back to the Roman era.

Kissing at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve can be traced back to the ancient Roman festival Saturnalia, where people would have drunken parties (nice to know that nothing's changed).

German and English folklore also believed that the first person you encounter in the New Year could determine whether you had good or bad fortune in the year ahead.

According to Entertaining from Ancient Rome to the Super Bowl: An Encyclopedia, "Over time people may have begun to take a proactive approach by kissing someone they knew and liked at the first moment of the New Year."

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Now the popular NYE superstition dictates that if you kiss someone on New Year’s Eve, you will have a year of luck in love.

While the New Year’s Eve kiss is largely hyped, truth be told it’s only important if it’s important to you - and it’s certainly not worth kissing just anyone over.

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