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Gesundheit definition4/19/2023 “Saying simply ‘bless you’ also reduces religious implications or revelations about your own beliefs,” said Frank Farley, a psychology professor at Temple University. “I think some atheists are annoyed by the use of the word God in ‘God bless you.’ Atheists probably prefer gesundheit or some equivalent, which just means ‘good health,’ a principle the faithful and faithless alike can believe in,” Dr. It’s probably worth mentioning that I’m an atheist, which really drove me to edit my word choice when people sneeze.” “I think it’s super uncomfortable to hear ‘God bless you’ all the time. “It took a few weeks for it to become second nature and to feel natural,” she said. Kaley Komanski, a social media manager based in Orlando, recently taught herself to say “gesundheit” rather than “bless you” when people sneeze. “Because of the deep connection in the human psyche between religion, cleanliness and the emotion of disgust, invoking God after sneezing is more likely, as compared to invoking God after other anomalous events like a random piece of debris hitting someone on the shoulder,” he said. Omar Sultan Haque, a psychiatrist and social scientist at Harvard Medical School, although the onset of sneezes appears to be random, attributing divine blessing may function to explain things when ordinary explanations are lacking. Of all the random things that happen that could be associated with God, why sneezing?Īccording to Dr. “But other responses to sneezing - Gesundheit, in German Salud, in Spanish - came from the idea that a sneeze is a sign of divine beneficence.” “That was certainly another belief,” said Dr. In ancient times, people believed that sneezing would allow evil spirits to enter your body, and saying “God bless you” kept out those evil spirits. “For European Christians, when the first plague that weakened the now Christian Roman Empire around 590, Pope Gregory the Great believed that a sneeze was an early warning sign of plague, so he commanded Christians to respond to a sneeze with a blessing,” he said. David Myers, a professor of history at Fordham University. Historically, sneezes were thought to be an omen or warning from the gods, according to W. How and where did this social behavior originate? She always says “bless you” to anyone who sneezes, even her dog. “Today, people aren’t quite sure why they are saying it, but they are afraid that if they don’t say it, people will think that they are rude or don’t care about the person who sneezed.”ĭara Avenius, a New York publicist, is one of those people who finds it rude if she sneezes and someone goes on with a conversation as if she hadn’t just sneezed. “If it is repeated enough times, especially with positive reinforcement - the sneezer says ‘thank you’ - it becomes increasingly reflexive, it starts to be done without conscious thought,” Dr. “For many people, this response has been conditioned into them, that this is what you do when someone sneezes, anyone.” Gail Saltz, an associate professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine. “Saying ‘God bless you’ following a sneeze is a common refrain, so common and taught from childhood that many people don’t even think of it as a blessing, but rather as an utterance without specific meaning other than a response to a sneeze that is polite in some way,” said Dr. Why do we feel compelled to say it to anyone who sneezes, even if the sneezer is a stranger or the sneeze is heard from afar? Saying “bless you” or “God bless you” after someone sneezes seems to be a reflex response.
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