Growing up in a Christian home, I often
heard my mum say “bless you” after sneezing. I realized nothing was said after
coughing or burping but only sneezing. Some days ago I was in physiology
experiment class and the teacher sneezed. A student quickly replied “bless you”.
This teacher was obviously Chinese and for a
moment I wondered if he understood why she said “bless you”. Right then I realized
I didn't know what that phrase really meant and why it was said after sneezing.
We now know
that sneezing is a reflex action and is most often the sign of something
relatively benign, such as a cold or allergy.
A sneeze also can be provoked by being outside in the sunlight or from smelling a strong odour. Still, we persist in
the custom of saying "bless you" mainly out of habit and common
courtesy.
Some cultures have similar response to
sneezes, believing that a sneeze could signal ill health: they might say, “Salud” (Spanish for “health”) or “Gesundheit” (German for “health”) or “Sláinte” (Irish Gaelic for “good health”) or “Jeebo” (Bengali for “stay alive”).
For the most
part, the various sneeze responses originated from ancient superstitions. Some
people believed that a sneeze causes the soul to escape the body through the
nose. Saying "bless you" would stop the devil from claiming the
person's freed soul.
Others believed the opposite: that evil spirits use the
sneeze as an opportunity to enter a person's body. There was also the
misconception that the heart momentarily stops during a sneeze (it
doesn't), and that saying "bless you" was a way of welcoming the
person back to life.
The Romans
would say "Jupiter preserve you" or "Salve," which meant
"good health to you," and the Greeks would wish each other "long
life."
The phrase "God bless you" is attributed to Pope
Gregory the Great, who uttered it in the sixth century during a bubonic plague epidemic which sneezing was an obvious
symptom of one form of the plague.
There
is a legend/tradition that Pope Gregory I commanded that, any time a sneeze was
heard, the sneezer was to be blessed by saying, “God bless you,” (and making
the sign of the cross over his mouth) as protection against the plague.
Finally, there is no biblical validity to such
superstition. At the same time, there is no biblical reason to believe it is
sinful to bless someone after a sneeze—in fact, it might just be a good time to
extend a kind word and say, “God bless you.”
Interesting facts about sneezing:
- Sneezes
are an automatic reflex that can’t be stopped once sneezing starts.
- Sneezes
can travel at a speed of 100 miles per hour and the wet spray can radiate
five feet.
- People
don’t sneeze when they are asleep because the nerves involved in nerve
reflex are also resting.
- Between
18 and 35% of the population sneezes when exposed to sudden bright light.
- Some
people sneeze when plucking their eyebrows because the nerve endings in
the face are irritated and then fire an impulse that reaches the nasal
nerve.
- Donna
Griffiths from Worcestershire, England sneezed for 978 days, sneezing once
every minute at the beginning. This is the longest sneezing episode on
record.
