Respond to prefers-color-scheme dark in app web views

Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

Confident of victory over Ukraine, Russia exhibits Western war trophies

Two women are seeking Mexico’s presidency. But the race is about a man.

Hamas in Cairo for hostage talks as Israel briefs aid agencies on Rafah

The Post endorses April McClain Delaney and Tom Royals for Maryland’s 6th District

On Press Freedom Day, little to celebrate for Hong Kong’s journalists

Young Georgians want to be part of Europe. Their government is in the way.

The new cure-all for vacation excess: the IV drip 

What’s the best bus to New York? We tested 5 for comfort and value.

Adaptive equipment is making national parks more inclusive

Ask Amy: My boyfriend just confessed he’s almost $20,000 in debt

Miss Manners: Is it inappropriate to reach out to old girlfriends?

Carolyn Hax: Longtime friend won’t forgive being last-minute canceled for a guy

Trump Media auditor charged by SEC with ‘massive fraud’

Google’s empire is massive. A judge will soon rule if it’s a monopoly.

Five tech products we actually like

Biden confronts campus protests; Trump hedges on accepting election results

Kristi Noem just won’t stop talking about killing her dog

Noem’s dog-killing isn’t popular, though Trump supporters are divided

In photos: At least 39 dead as historic flooding hits southern Brazil

Sea level rise brings new era of dangerous flooding

Michael Cohen keeps broadcasting despite being a witness

In a pinch, the Nationals finally find some offense

Is Pastis as good as our food critic thought? He sent spies to find out.

The Capitals, a team in transition, know what they want this offseason

Strangers help Sesame Street puppeteer after heirloom necklace was stolen

Teen grabs wheel when driver passes out and school bus veers into traffic

Cat climbed into Amazon return box, found alive 630 miles away

The New York Times, alone in its outrage over access to Biden

The ‘Access Hollywood’ video cemented Trump’s air of invincibility

Stephen A. Smith would like even more of your attention

Health

Well+Being

Opinions

Higher Education

Education

https://www.washingtonpost.com/coronavirus/

Coronavirus pandemic

BRUSSELS — Manon Fily took advantage of France's eased coronavirus lockdown this week to see some old high school friends after two months shut away in her home in Brittany. But there was one big thing missing from her gathering: a peck on the right cheek, then a second on the left.

The cheek kiss is fundamental to greetings among friends, colleagues and even national leaders in many countries in Europe. It is also exceedingly ill-suited during the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/coronavirus/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">coronavirus</a> pandemic. As Europeans start meeting again with family and friends this month for the first time since the virus swept the world, they are discovering a need to suppress a seemingly inherent reflex.

“We had the instinct to do the peck on the cheek,” said Fily, 30, a civil servant, of the visit at a friend’s house. “But we stopped ourselves. It’s tough.”

Kissing as greeting is a European tradition that can be found all the way back in pre-Christian accounts. Ancient Romans had a precise taxonomy for the level of passion infused in their kisses. In feudal France, vassals pledged loyalty to their lords with a smooch on the lips.

The prevalence of the nonromantic kiss has waxed and waned over the years. The Black Death in the 14th century made it particularly unfashionable, and at the time of the 1918 flu pandemic it tended to be reserved for family members. But recent decades have seen “kiss inflation,” in the words of French sociologist Dominique Picard, with a cheek peck becoming de rigueur among an ever-widening circle of acquaintances.

The practice — whether involving one, two, three or even four kisses — has been especially popular in the countries that rim the Mediterranean, and those, such as Belgium, that are linguistically and culturally tied to them.

The kiss has even sometimes seduced visiting Americans. At a summit in France in August, President Trump exchanged pecks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and with the wife of French President Emmanuel Macron. First lady Melania Trump, meanwhile, became the subject of Internet memes for her <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O08PD8Fqk14" title="www.youtube.com">kiss greeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau</a>.

That intimacy now feels as though it were from a different, more tactile time.

Francois Mori

“We are a culture of contact, and so we easily touch each other,” said Picard, the author of “<a href="https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B07YHLWMHN&amp;preview=newtab&amp;linkCode=kpe&amp;ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_27RVEb85VNHAD&amp;tag=thewaspos09-20" title="read.amazon.com">Politeness, Good Manners and Social Relations</a>.” “We will stay a civilization that needs some human warmth between people. But I suspect that a lot of people are going to stop kissing each other,” she said of Mediterranean cultures, including her native France.

[France mandates masks to control the coronavirus. Burqas remain banned.]

The kiss is sufficiently ingrained that even some respected doctors say they don’t want to lose it entirely.

“It would be truly sad for the result of the pandemic to be a homogenization of cultures and their traditions,” said Bertrand Kiefer, editor of the Swiss Medical Review. “But even if we start doing it again, it won’t be with the carefree attitude from before the pandemic,” he said, comparing it to the way the AIDS epidemic changed how people have sex.

The kiss briefly survived in the coronavirus era: Macron greeted Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte with double-cheek kisses at a summit in Naples in late February. It was widely viewed as a signal to Europeans that they should not fear their neighbors, even though Italy was already turning into a hot spot for the virus.

But Macron more recently has made a point to appear in public <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/france-face-masks-coronavirus/2020/05/09/6fbd50fc-8ae6-11ea-80df-d24b35a568ae_story.html" title="www.washingtonpost.com">wearing a face mask</a> and to model proper social distancing behavior.

In Italy, the nation’s civil protection chief, Angelo Borrelli, said almost apologetically at the beginning of the outbreak that the country’s “very florid, very expansive” social life needed to stop. Now, as <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe-begins-to-cautiously-reopen-despite-fears-of-new-outbreak/2020/05/04/2e720474-8a5c-11ea-80df-d24b35a568ae_story.html" title="www.washingtonpost.com">Italy reemerges from lockdown</a>, people are unsure how they should interact.

Guglielmo Mangiapane

On street corners in Rome, in front of coffee shops or in neighborhood piazzas, one can see an ongoing experiment in how to replace the baci and abbracci: With air kisses? Waves? Namastes? Some lean in and tap elbows — a gesture best accompanied by an eye roll, to acknowledge the weirdness.

[Italy loosens Europe’s longest coronavirus lockdown]

Gilbert Halaby, a boutique owner, had been worrying for weeks about a restaurateur in her 70s, and about the restaurant itself — a neighborhood institution with simple pastas and typewriter-printed menus. Halaby shouted with joy when he saw her preparing to reopen. In normal times, he would have given her a hug, a kiss.

Instead, he kept a meter away and sprang up and down.

“I love to hug. I love a human touch,” Halaby said. “First moment, after not seeing somebody for a long time. You have to stop yourself.”

He said his goal was to refrain from getting close without “losing the affection.”

Multiple barriers to physical contact are emerging, as Italy begins to reshape itself to the threat of the virus. Many shops require masks and have tape markings on the floor for guidance on distancing. Cafes have installed plexiglass barricades around bars and cashiers. At a major bookstore chain, all employees wear welder-style face guards.

Carlo Carboni, a sociologist at the Polytechnic University of Marche, said he still expected the hugging and kissing to return after the threat of the virus waned.

“Elbow tapping and these other social distance greetings will be but a memory of a circumscribed phase of our lives, I hope,” Carboni said. “It’s not as if the black plague or the Spanish flu managed to change our nature.”

Emanuele Valeri

In Spain, which by some measures has been the hardest-hit country in Europe, a new kiss-free normal may pose major challenges, said Daniel Chornet, a professor of cultural communication at Saint Louis University’s Madrid campus.

“Spain is a contact culture. People feel culture deeply,” Chornet said. “They feel bad if they are not able to go on with a ritual or participate in cultural acts.”

[Want to exercise in Spain? You have to wait for your shift.]

Enforcing wide physical distances may be hard, he said, mostly because people may feel embarrassed or uncomfortable being the one who doesn’t kiss.

Chornet said he had urged his 65-year-old mother to refrain from greeting relatives for a Sunday lunch scheduled for next week with two kisses.

“They need to lay down ground rules about how they will communicate nonverbally — in advance,” he said. “In the moment, it will be awkward if some are kissing and some aren’t.”

One team at the University of Alicante Foundation determined that Spaniards are greeting one another most commonly with a head nod these days — and that even wearing face masks, people have been able to convey approachability.

“If a person lowers their chin, it means they are pleased and open and there is a connection,” said Javier Torregrosa, a researcher in nonverbal communication who led the work. “If they raise their chin, it is correct recognition, but without connection or approachability.”

Even within European cultures that have been less attached to the kiss greeting, the idea that pecks may be forbidden stirs some passions.

The British have long been on the fence about how to greet one another. It’s like Brexit: They’re in, they’re out, they can’t quite decide. Urban elites who lunch at the Soho House in London often greet one another with kisses. Mates in a pub in the Liverpool? Not bloody likely.

But the cheek smooch is already being missed.

“We are, by nature, super-passionate about defending anything that is being taken away from us, good or bad,” said Judi James, a body language expert and author of books including “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0749922583?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=thewaspos09-20&amp;camp=1789&amp;linkCode=xm2&amp;creativeASIN=0749922583" title="www.amazon.com">BodyTalk at Work</a>.”

“We were never very good at it, as most of us had no idea which cheek first and how many kisses to plant, but we were throwing ourselves into it with enthusiasm rather than technique,” she said.

Harlan reported from Rome and Rolfe reported from Madrid. Quentin Ariès in Brussels, William Booth in London and Stefano Pitrelli in Rome contributed to this report.


Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world



Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news


Member of the "Pegasus Project" team that won a George Polk Award, 2021.

Yale University, BA in History

Deep Springs College

Michael Birnbaum is a national security reporter for The Washington Post, covering the State Department and diplomacy. He previously served more than a decade in Europe as The Post’s bureau chief in Brussels, Moscow and Berlin, reporting from more than 40 countries, and he covered climate and security from Washington. He joined The Post in 2008.

Michael Birnbaum

Gerald Loeb Award, finalist, beat reporting, 2017

Gerald Loeb Award, finalist, feature writing, 2016

Madeline Dane Ross Award, Overseas Press Club, “Disaster in Japan,” 2011

Syracuse University

Chico Harlan is The Washington Post's global climate correspondent. Previously, he was The Post’s Rome bureau chief, covering southern Europe as well as the Catholic Church. He has also been a member of The Post's financial and national enterprise teams, as well as East Asia bureau chief. 

Chico Harlan

Pamela Rolfe

The Washington Post

Coronavirus brings end to cheek kiss in Europe

Contributor

Getty

TOPSHOT-FRANCE-G7-SUMMIT

U.S. cases and deaths by state

World map

New CDC guidance

When am I still contagious?

The people who never get covid

Coronavirus

iptc-media/health/diseases_and_conditions/communicable_disease/virus_disease

iptc-media/health/diseases_and_conditions/communicable_disease

iptc-media/health/diseases_and_conditions/communicable_disease/epidemic

iptc-media/health

iptc-media/science_and_technology

iptc-media/health/diseases_and_conditions

iptc-media/arts_culture_entertainment_and_media

client-blocklists/Client List: Morgan Stanley KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Amazon KWs - EXCLUDE ALL 

client-blocklists/Client List: Becton Dickinson KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/CLIENT LIST: Nomura KWs 2021 - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Boeing KWs 2021- INCLUDE ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Exxon Mobil  - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/GEICO KWs - INCLUDES ANY_4.26.21

client-blocklists/Client List: T. Rowe Price KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Microsoft KWs 2 - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/T. Rowe Price KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/HBO KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Ford/Lincoln KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/ExxonMobil 03312021 KWs - INCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Bank of America KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

advertising/Flu, Sickness & Virus Content

client-blocklists/WaPo: Combined Disaster Keyword List - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/Coronavirus Content

client-blocklists/Client List: Navy Federal Credit Union NFCU KWs 2 - EXCLUDES ALL - 12.23.20

advertising/B2_Communities and Subcultures_legacyaux_ry3

advertising/B2_Community Service_legacyaux_h1s

client-blocklists/Client List: Eli Lily KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Purina KWs - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/Qualcomm Custom KW - 5G

advertising/Citrix Mindfulness

client-blocklists/BP KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/ CLIENT LIST: AT&T KWs 2021 - EXCLUDES ALL

advertising/B2_Positive News_legacyaux_hlt

advertising/B2_Society_legacyaux_0cz

client-blocklists/Client List: GEICO KWs

client-blocklists/Client List: KPMG KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Navy Federal Credit Union NFCU KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Verizon KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Siemens KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Cisco KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: AT&T ALT KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Mercedes KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/FX Excludes All Disney

client-blocklists/Client List: Inpixon KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Boeing KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Google KWs - INCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Philip Morris KWs - INCLUDES ANY 

client-blocklists/Capital One KWs 2 - INCLUDES ANY - 1.4.21

client-blocklists/Bank of America Merrill Lynch KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Google PG KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Chase KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Office Depot KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: ETrade KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

prism://prism.query/site,/world/europe&limit=20

Europe

The Washington Post provides the latest information and analysis on UK and European news. Includes news from the European Union, European commission news and European parliament news.

prism://prism.query/site-articles-only,/world/&limit=20

Are you on Telegram? Subscribe to our channel for the latest updates on Russia’s war in Ukraine.

World

The Washington Post World section provides information and analysis of breaking world news stories. In addition to our world news and video, Post World News offers discussions and blogs on major international news and economic issues.

prism://prism.query/ap-articles-by-site-id,/world

prism://prism.query/tag,magnet-coronavirus&limit=20

News and updates about the coronavirus pandemic: Cases in the US, death toll, what you need to know about the virus, how to prepare, how to get tested.