Celebrated on January 21, World Hugging Day is an offshoot of National Hugging Day, which has been embraced in countries across the world including Canada, Russia and Germany. It originated in Michigan in 1986 — the brainchild of US Americans Adam Olis and Kevin Zaborney, the latter wanting to encourage people to cuddle because "American society is embarrassed to show feelings in public."

Hugging and expressing feelings in general is said to improve general well-being. World Hugging Day is intended as an incentive to more often show family and friends what they mean to you.

But the US President Donald Trump seems to have misunderstood something here: It's clearly a matter of showing affection to your fellow human beings, not objects. World Hugging Day is about embracing people, not patriotism.

On the occasion of World Hugging Day in 2013, the Center for Brain Research at the Medical University of Vienna confirmed that hugging, cuddling and kissing are healthy habits that can help to reduce stress and anxiety. Cuddling also lowers blood pressure and boosts the immune system.

The hormone oxytocin is responsible for our feelings of happiness when cuddling. This "cuddling hormone" is produced in the pituitary gland and is produced, for example, in mothers during childbirth and breastfeeding. It thus strengthens the bond between mother and child. But men's bodies also produce the hormone.

Though cuddling is a proven means to reduce stress, caution is advised if it's one-sided. When the feeling isn't mutual, the stress hormone cortisol can be released, giving the hugee a feeling of unease. So any hug needs to be well-considered — and, if in doubt, simply ask for permission.

Cuddling is a very emotional affair, also in the animal world. Just like humans, animals express their mutual affection with kisses and cuddles. And here also, intimacy requires trust.

Did then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev (left) ask Erich Honecker, Chairman of the State Council of the GDR, for permission for this iconic big kiss on the eve of the fall of the Berlin Wall? Were stress hormones flowing in Honecker's body? One will never know. What is certain is that the image of this historic embrace will not be forgotten.

Gorbachev and Honecker were not the first, nor the last, world leaders to enjoy a hug. Nearly 30 years later in 2018, French President Emmanuel Macron (left) and Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau continued a cuddly traditional of international diplomacy and detente.

Love and affection are important in every culture in the world. No wonder then that these feelings also find expression in art, such as here in Auguste Rodin's famous sculpture "Le baiser" ("The Kiss"). International Kissing Day is also a thing and is celebrated on July 6. It was established in Great Britain in the early 1990s, which makes World Hugging Day a slightly older tradition.

The Norwegian playwright has had 1,000 productions of his plays staged in more than 50 languages. He is also the author of novels, poetry and children's books. The Nobel Prize committee selected the writer "for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable." He is shown here at the National Book Awards in 2022, where he was a nominee for "A New Name: Septology VI-VII."

The French author, born in 1940, is renowned for her autobiographical prose works that go "beyond fiction in the narrow sense," said the Swedish Academy. Among others, her 2001 book "Happening" deals with her illegal abortion from the 1960s. She was selected "for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory."

Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2021 "for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism," said the Swedish Academy. "His novels recoil from stereotypical descriptions and open our gaze to a culturally diversified East Africa unfamiliar to many in other parts of the world."

Crowned with the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2020, the American poet and essayist had already won major awards in the US, including the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, as well as the National Humanities Medal, which was presented by Barack Obama in 2016. Her most notable works include the "The Triumph of Achilles" (1985) and "The Wild Iris" (1992).

The Austrian author born in 1942 became famous with experimental plays such as "Offending the Audience" in 1966. He also co-wrote Wim Wenders films, including "Wings of Desire." The decision to award Handke the Nobel Prize was criticized since he is also known for his controversial positions on the Yugoslav Wars. In 2014, he had also called the prize to be abolished, dubbing it a "circus."

The Polish writer was actually awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in 2019, since it had been postponed for a year following scandals affecting the Swedish Academy, the body that chooses the laureates for the award. A two-time winner of Poland's top literary prize, the Nike Award, Tokarczuk was also honored in 2010 with the Man Booker International Prize for her novel "Flights."

Japan-born British novelist, screenwriter and short story writer Kazuo Ishiguro won the 2017 award. His most renowned novel, "The Remains of the Day" (1989), was adapted into a movie starring Anthony Hopkins. His works deal with memory, time and self-delusion.

An atypical but world famous laureate: US songwriter Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016. The Swedish Academy selected him "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition."

Calling her work "a monument to suffering and courage in our time," the Swedish Academy honored the Belarusian author and investigative journalist in 2015. Alexievich is best known for her emotive firsthand accounts of war and suffering, including "War's Unwomanly Face" (1985) and "Voices from Chernobyl" (2005).

The French writer's stories describe a universe of haunted cities, absentee parents, criminality and lost youths. They are all set in Paris with the shadow of the Second World War looming heavily in the background. The Swedish Academy described the novelist, whose work has often focused on the Nazi occupation of France, as "a Marcel Proust of our time."

Canadian writer Alice Munro is no stranger to accolades, having received the Man Booker International Prize and the Canadian Governor General Literary Award three times over. The Swedish Academy called her a "master of the contemporary short story."

Guan Moye, better known under his pen name Mo Yan, was praised by the Swedish Academy as a writer "who with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary." The decision was criticized by Chinese dissidents like artist Ai Weiwei, who claimed Mo Yan was too close to the Chinese Communist Party and did not support fellow intellectuals who faced political repression

The Academy chose Tomas Gosta Transtromer as the winner in 2011 "because, through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality." In the 1960s, the Swedish poet worked as a psychologist at a center for juvenile offenders. His poetry has been translated into over 60 languages.

The Peruvian novelist received the Nobel Prize "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat." In Latin America, he is famous for uttering the phrase "Mexico is the perfect dictatorship" on TV in 1990 and for punching his once-friend and fellow Nobel laureate, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, in the face in 1976.

The German-Romanian author was awarded the Nobel Prize as a writer "who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed." She is noted for her work criticizing the repressive communist regime of Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania, which she experienced herself. Müller writes in German and moved to West Berlin in 1987.

The Swedish Academy called J.M.G. Le Clezio an "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization." Le Clezio was born in Nice, France, in 1940 to a French mother and a Mauritian father. He holds dual citizenship and calls Mauritius his "little fatherland."

British author Doris May Lessing (1919-2013) wrote novels, plays and short stories, to name just a few of her mediums. The Nobel Prize recognized her for being a writer "who with skepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilization to scrutiny." She also campaigned against nuclear weapons and the Apartheid regime in South Africa.

Ferit Orhan Pamuk, "who in the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures," was the first Turkish author to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. With more than 13 million books sold, he is Turkey's bestselling writer. Pamuk was born in Istanbul and currently teaches at Columbia University in New York City.

Harold Pinter, "who in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms," was awarded the Nobel Prize three years before his death from liver cancer. He died on Christmas Eve in 2008. The British playwright directed and acted in many radio and film productions of his own work. In total, he received more than 50 awards.

The 10th woman to win the award since its creation in 1901, Austrian author Elfriede Jelinek was recognized "for her musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels" and for her plays that reveal society's clichés. A central theme in Jelinek's work is female sexuality. Her novel "The Piano Teacher" was the basis for the 2001 movie of the same name featuring Isabelle Huppert in the lead role.