Greetings Vary by Culture – 5 Great Examples!

“….two American men on meeting grasp each other’s hand and shake it. In Mexico we would see them embrace. In India each puts his hands together and raises them towards his forehead with a slight bow of the head——a gesture of greeting that is efficient, for it permits a person to greet a great many others in a single motion, and clean, for people need not touch each other. The latter is particularly important in a society where the touch of an untouchable used to defile a high caste person and force him to take a purification bath. Among the Siriano of South America, men spit on each other’s chests in greeting.

Probably the strangest form of greeting was observed by Dr. Jacob Loewen in Panama. On leaving the jungle on a small plane with the local native chief, he noticed the chief go to all his fellow tribesmen and suck their mouths. When Dr. Loewen inquired about this custom, the chief explained that they had learned this custom from the white man. They had seen that every time he went up in his plane, he sucked the mouths of his people as magic to insure a safe journey. If we stop and think about it a minute, Americans, in fact, have two types of greeting, shaking hands and sucking mouths, and we must be careful not to use the wrong form with the wrong people.

Like most cultural patterns, kissing is not a universal human custom. It was absent among most primitive tribesmen, and considered vulgar and revolting to the Chinese who thought it too suggestive of cannibalism."

(Crucial Dimensions on World Evangelisation, Arthur F. Glasser, Paul G. Hiebert C Peter Wagner, Ralph D. Winter. William Carey Library 1980 pg 45-46)