Growing up in church I’ve learned that different times/situations warrant different styles of hugs.  This beginner’s guide to hugging will help you learn to appropriately hug during a specific setting.

My first example is when the welcoming pastor asks everyone in the congregation to mingle for a moment and give each other a “BEAR” hug.  To visitors or new converts this may sound like the pastor wants you to tightly and closely squeeze/embrace your neighbor, but this is not the case.  A “BEAR” hug is actually an acronym for “Barely Even A Real” hug.  So, don’t invade anyone’s personal space, in fact just shake their hand.

The second most popular mistake in christian hugging is the “mixed-gender” hug.  Many times in youth groups and sunday schools (pre)teen girls become very touchy-feely and want to hug everyone they know, including their male friends.  This isn’t always a problem and many times its needed and encouraged, but for the most part churches, youth groups, and the like all encourage students to stick to a “side hug” rather then a full frontal hug.  Often times, a side hug turns fatal [full frontal] when students fail to turn correctly.  Occasionally one student will go for a left-side hug while the other student is going for a side hug on the opposite side, resulting in a head-on collision.

Another common hugging mishap occurs when a hug “lingers”.  Perhaps a young couple want to show their affection for each other but the youth group they attend enforces a strict PDA [public display of affection] law prohibiting kissing and touching, these troubled youth will often times turn to a hug that lasts much longer then a typical hug between awkward teens.  I recently heard/read someone describe a solution to this kind of lingering hug: Guerrilla hug.  Unlike the acronym-istic BEAR hug, this hug gets its name from guerrilla warfare.  This [for those of you unfamiliar with the term] is the kind of warfare where small group of combatants use mobile tactics (ambushes, raids, etc.) to combat a larger and less mobile formal army.  Touch and go.  If it works in the congo, it can work in the youth groups.  Tell those pesky kids not to linger… Guerrilla hug.

Lastly, I’ve only seen this hug a few times, but I still feel it needs to be addressed.  And that is the “Creepy hug”.  I suppose any hug could be creepy, especially if the person giving it was creepy, but this particular hug occurs when the hugger rubs his/her beardy face up against yours.  You might have to witness it to understand, but please take my word when I say that its disturbing.

Hopefully you’ve learned a lot from this tutorial of sorts.

Keep hugging,

Andrew Nemeth