What would YOU say to her?
Like most people, sometimes I sneeze. Recently, after sneezing, an eminent atheist mate of mine said “Bless You” and then apologised and exclaimed “I don’t know why I said that!”. We had a brief discussion about the reflexive nature of the phrase “Bless You” and he said he would look into it for a potential blog post. I seem to have beaten him to it so I’d be interested in his verdict when I’m done.
First things first: Where does it come from?
Snopes offers several explanations, although this is the one I’m most familiar with:
“Others claim an association of the practice with particular dire diseases (most often the bubonic plague, or “Black Death”, as it is sometimes known). They say a infected person’s sneeze was a sure sign he’d soon be pushing up daisies, thus the “Bless you!” was intended as a benediction to the nearly-departed, a way of commending his soul to the care of God now that he was beyond the help of anything in the mortal world.”
What are some of the alternatives?
- Salud! (Spanish, “Your health!”)
- Santé (French, “health”)
- Gesundheit (note)
- Good health!
- Good health to you, too.
- Thank you – be happy and healthy!
- May Lady Luck bless you and keep you. (John)
- To your health! Peace! (Ed)
- May fortune favor you. (Brian)
- Thank you very much. May you live a blessed life also. (Joseph)
- And you are in my thoughts. (Johnnie)
(Copied and pasted from the Brights)
The first four seem fairly simple in terms of switching reflex-sentiments easily. The others seem a bit long winded. “Bless You” sort of rolls off the tongue quite neatly, it can be said in roughly half a second, and when someone doesn’t say it, people notice, so I’d be happier with a replacement with as few syllables as possible.
Take a ganders at the wonderment of the MetaFilter. There are just too many good suggestions.
Why would I want to respond to someone else sneezing?
Here’s a very extreme example of what can go wrong when you sneeze. Think about that, atheist punk.
Those clever folks over at Drowned in Sound have already created a page about it here:
“people who say “bless you” deserve to have their testicles repeatedly twanged with a pencil”
Ouch.
Social Anxiety Support (yikes) has this to add to the debate.
OK Carmen, you’re gagging for it, I can tell. Give us your suggestions:
Oh, if you insist 
- “You exploded!” – Possible variations include “You asploded” and “Explosivo”
- “Einstein!” or indeed “Einstein’s Brain!”
- “Blap!” or “Brap!”
- “Call of Cthulu!” or “Cthulu is coming in your nose” or just “Cthulu!”
- “Bisto!” (added beneift is it could be mistaken for “Bless You” if you say it quickly enough)
*Blog title refers, of course, to the Klingon translation of “You have a disease, go away”, courtesy of @qurgh who also runs this useful website for all hopeful intergalactic ambassadors.
Nice subject for a post.
Non religious scientists all around me continue to say ‘Bless you’ whenever anyone sneezes, with nary a thought of the hypocrisy. I personally hate it when someone says it to me and I’m sure they’re expecting the culturally-conditioned ‘Thank-you’ in response. Being tired of entering into discourse upon every such occasion, I tend to just ignore it that it was ever said – but then I feel guilty, ridiculously.
What a ball ache – where’s that pencil!?
I always say ‘bless you’ – as you identified at the start of this blog.
For me this is purely because I consider it polite to acknowlege when someone sneezes anywhere but in my face. The words used are a cultural response and I suppose I should use ‘thank you’ rather than ‘bless you’, but people then get confused.
*Hunts for pencil*
Surely it’s just as polite to say “Sante” or “Gesundheit” without the religious implication? Think grassroots Paolo. We take it out of our vocabulary and replace it with something of equal weight which carries none of the religious significance.
I’m sure I’ve heard someone use “bless you” as proof of god’s existence… I’ll look that up and get back to you though!
Cheers for the comments
x
Well, if we’re looking for rhyming phrase with appropriate societal implications, how about “Tamiflu”?
I totally forgot to mention in my blog that at the height of the swine flu reporting in the news, every time I sneezed, I’d shout “pig flu”, and if someone else sneezed it was “oh no it’s the a-PORK-alypse!”
“A-pork-alypse Sow!”
As a child I was told the reason for saying Bless You was because with the sneeze the soul temporarily left the body and in that moment the devil would nip in unless warded off with the blessing. So yes, why do I continue to use it! Particularly as I try to avoid deity-based exclamations elsewhere – though people come back and ask what OMW means – Oh My Word instead of Oh My God. I do feel compelled to acknowledge others’ sneezes and sorry I trained you to Paolo.
As a non-biologist I wonder whether there might be a instinctive component to the response – by saying Bless You, which is actually quite explosive in itself, one is breathing out and pushing air away from oneself, thus reducing the chances of breathing in any virus. I stress this in a reflex, not a conscious decision!
That hadn’t occurred to me, what a useful reflex to have. Although wouldn’t we need to inhale slightly before speaking? I’m not sure of the mechanism but it would add nicely to the origins of the “bless you” debate
I ‘blaspheme’ a hell of a lot (badoom tsk). I think it’s more a cultural (ie non religious) thing, as it’s easy to drop in a “Bloody hell” or “For god’s sake” now and again – especially when I’m at work and talking to colleagues. If I started saying “By the head of Cthulu” or “Perforated Bovine” they’d get a bit freaked out (I only work in an office)! I like the idea of exploring non religious alternatives, and to get into the habit of it.
Thanks for the comment
[...] rop Daghaj, naDevvo’ yIghoS!* « Carmen Gets Around (II) carmenego.wordpress.com/2009/08/26/rop-daghaj-nadevvo-yighos – view page – cached #Carmen Gets Around (II) RSS Feed Carmen Gets Around (II) » rop Daghaj, naDevvo’ yIghoS!* Comments Feed Carmen Gets Around (II) Hello world! Man or — From the page [...]
looking at the extreme example you gave, reminded me of someone i spoke to years ago who sneezed behind the wheel lost control and hit another car, and was wondering if they were absolved of blame because of the sneeze.
On the subject of ‘bless you’ i must say it 5 times a day and would really like to find an alternative.