Buzz
From an early age, we pick up on various social behaviors. It's considered rude to cough without covering your mouth. We say thank you when receiving gifts like money or cake. And when someone suddenly sneezes, we instinctively say bless you.
But why is this the case? What’s the connection between a blessing and a sneeze? Was there ever a belief that a demon might escape our noses with the force of a sneeze?
The origins of this tradition are somewhat murky, with recorded mentions of the bless you phrase dating back to around 77 C.E., though the exact reasoning is often left unexplained. However, it's clear that people viewed sneezing as a sign of good health, prompting well-wishes. In ancient Greece and Rome, after a sneeze, phrases like live long and may Jupiter bless you were commonly heard.
The positive association with sneezing shifted during the 6th century when Pope Gregory I was confronted with the bubonic plague, or Black Death. Sneezing was a sign of illness, so the Pope deemed it appropriate to say God bless you as a form of divine protection from a fate that was otherwise nearly certain.
A widespread myth existed that the heart temporarily stopped during a sneeze, likely due to changes in blood flow causing a brief delay in the heartbeat. People may have said bless you to ensure the heart would keep beating, or as a way to congratulate someone: Bless you, Carl. You survived that sneeze.
Some cultures that believed sneezing could expel spirits or transfer evil ones might have adopted the phrase as a protective measure to fend off such exchanges.
Regardless of how it began, it’s evident that we’ve come to expect the phrase when someone sneezes. If someone doesn’t say bless you, we might assume they don’t care about our well-being. As etiquette expert Miss Manners once remarked, it’s considered more impolite for the person receiving the sneeze to ignore the bless you than for the sneezer to neglect saying excuse me. A plague certainly left its mark on society.
