What the Fuck is "Bless You" Anymore?

KHRNGHCHGK
(cough)

A thought has been floating about my mind for perhaps the last week. What's the significance of saying "bless you" when someone sneezes in modern times?

I've always thought that it was an archaic phrase since I was a kid, granted, I wasn't religious growing up (despite the fact that for a brief period in my life from my birth to 4 years, it was the most religious my world had been and likely ever will be) and I didn't know what kind of action "blessing" was. My dad didn't even try to enunciate the phrase, always saying "ka-blesshew". My good friends typically say "gesundheit", the German word for health that is used over there as a sneeze response: "to your (good) health", but sometimes sneezing isn't because you're sick, occasionally it's because your nasal cavity was gently irritated.

So what's the historical significance of "bless you" in particular? It sources from The Raising of the Hands, specifically the philosophy that by saying the name of God in a setting of well-wishing, a divine force will ensure the good intentions witnessed. There doesn't necessarily have to be a religious inclination, but I'd like to assume that, for maybe a thousand years, there was no escape from religion in everyday life. A serf was an armchair theologian who contemplated the nature of God when his crops wither after what appeared to be a good season. A prostitute was a social nun in her power to prevent the sinning of her fellow men, all while bearing her own sins like the world on her shoulders. A baker was the man of the people, with his goods available to purchase by anybody who had the money to eat Christ's flesh.

Perhaps even simple pleasures like food and sex have good will, no matter who presented them and if payment was involved. Of course, times have changed, and regulations are involved to ensure that both parties are equitably represented in their own time, whether a sex worker receiving their salary through OnlyFans or the local deli making sure that their ham is up to code and good enough to eat for their patrons. There's less of a God with eyes on the world, almost as if borders were destroyed and with their erasure, the world centupled. Everyone's God is everywhere, with different names and faces, colors and shapes, almost as if there never was a single master of men.

Not many people look to Milhouse as inspiration, but he did have a good point here.

An alternative idea of why such a thing was said is from the belief that sneezing was a spiritual vulnerability, the sneeze creating a temporary lack of soul, the emptiness being a gateway to invite malicious supernatural activity into the body, with "bless you" acting as a shield against evil. Alternatively to the alternative, very stupid people believed that a sneeze stopped the heart, and much like the aforementioned Aku-Aku invincibility against the Devil or Neo Cortex, saying "bless you" got the ticker ticking again.

Sometimes sneezes are bad news, such as someone you know speaking ill behind your back in Cantonese culture, or in multi-religious countries like India or German-speaking territories, a sneeze is a sign of pity from a divine higher power. A "poor baby" punishment of reflex. Some interpretations are much sillier such as a sign of growth spurts or a quick way to bully small children (Serbia mostly, accusing the baby blessed of referencing Gravity Falls with their kitten sneezes), or just the fact that you need to drink water. Decent reminder nowadays, but then, it was much easier to get your hands on clean water.

The cultural significance of a human action like a sneeze is interesting for a lot of reasons, namely because in Abrahamic areas there's a tendency to sic God on you (to, as the kids say, lovebomb) in the hopes that you knock that shit off. Cram that soul back in. In East Asia, nobody really says anything unless you're kicking up a storm. A sneeze is just a thing you do when a little dustie rubs you wrong. Cover it with a tissue, a mask, a sleeve, check your phone. We've got more important things to think about right now. No words wasted on letting people know you heard them go "achoo". Thing is, I've been used to letting people know I went "achoo". Maybe I like it when people bless me. I want to balance my "thank you" and "I'm sorry" ratios, give me a cheap opportunity for me to thank someone instead of apologize.

Maybe it would surprise you to know that instead of blessing or ignoring, in Igbo, Swahili, and Yoruba, you just say "sorry". That's a greater satisfaction than simple acknowledgement to me, and I apologize if I sound arrogant. You could sneeze around someone who's done you wrong and they'd say "sorry" without any work on your end. That could save a lot of lives, I think. It could save a lot of trouble, relationships, grudges...

"The epic disappointment": it's not epic to me...

In China (among other places), they wish you another hundred years of life. I don't really want to think about living another hundred years right now! Where I'm at is pretty bad as is, I don't want to know about the next hundred from here. The intention is that the response will give you such impressive health that you live longer, and I do understand the significance of the number 100, but I really don't want to live that long! It's scary! Though, perhaps with stackable buffs (sneezing), I could change the world...it's quite a thought.

Besides, it's interesting that "bless you" became secularized in English. It's become an interesting formality in the language that it's transcended religious and cultural barriers to become a phrase that acknowledges a sneeze, and wishes you well (no matter if the sneeze came from sickness or not), and I think that's nice.

On a tangential note, when I was in Japan in 2023, I had a sneeze on the train to Yokohama. Nobody said anything, which I expected, but I felt like I was missing something. It's that firsthand experience with another culture that really shows how big this world is, where some say "bless you", some "gesundheit", and some neither or none at all. You could boil it down to how you were raised and the languages you learned, but boiling things down via Occam's Razor isn't all that fun to me. Let the booger rockets float around in my head a little bit. Let me think about it.