In Austria, it was once customary for young women to dance with slices of apples tucked beneath their armpits. When they finished dancing, the women would then give the sweaty fruits to their crushes as a sign of affection.
While this sounds incredibly hot to us now—almost pornographically hot—it is also weird. But it’s not that much weirder than plucking a flower from the ground and giving it to somebody, or even touching your lips to someone else’s to communicate affection.
As any pop song will tell you, words often fail to express what others mean to us. That’s because language is cold, full of dead metaphors insufficient to the task of describing the hot rush of a new crush or the deep joy of long love. It’s good for giving directions to the ballroom, but bad for communicating the way we feel when we watch our date glide across the dance floor with apples under their arms.
So we’ve developed these weird rituals that render our feelings in roses, gestures, foods, and art—stuff a lover can literally feel. Over time, though, these rituals lose their refresh value. They start to feel as old and rote as the phrase “I love you.” When that happens, it’s helpful to remember the reasons why we started doing them in the first place.
