Where is bless you come from

And when someone rears back and explodes in a violent expulsion of snot, we say bless you. Why do we do this? What does a blessing have to do with sneezing? Did anyone ever believe a demon flew out of our noses as we honked one out? Mentions of the bless you reaction date back to as early as 77 C. What is clear is that people tended to acknowledge sneezes as a sign of good health that prompted salutations. Unfortunately, the true origins of this bizarre social convention are a bit murky.

But there are plenty of fascinating guesses, and not surprisingly, most of them are based heavily on superstition. The most popular theory is that it originated in Rome when the bubonic plague was ravaging Europe. Sneezing was one the plague's main symptoms, and it is believed that Pope Gregory I suggested that a tiny prayer in the form of saying, "God bless you" after a sneeze would protect the person from death.

Another, more superstitious theory, is that it stems from the ancient belief that a sneeze might accidentally expel the spirit from the body unless God blessed you and prevented it. Other cultures thought that sneezing forced evil spirits out of the body, leaving others exposed to the wandering spirits. Vice versa, there was also a supposed belief that the sneeze expelled an existing demon from the body and the blessing protected against it getting back in.

Again, these beliefs are clearly nonsensical but enough people may have believed them for the phrase to have been coined that way. Similarly, two theories that relate to the age-old presumed connection between sneezing and good luck suggest that either the sneezer or the listener was bestowed with good fortune by the sneeze and the blessing was in thanks for that. All of the above proposed explanations of the origin of people saying 'Bless you! What we do know from documentary evidence is that the Ancient Romans had a very similar custom.

They 'saluted', not blessed, someone who sneezed. The Roman author Gaius Secundus, a. Why is it that we salute a person when he sneezes, an observation which Tiberius Caesar, they say, the most unsociable of men, as we all know, used to exact, when riding in his chariot even? So, while the 'bless you! There are other Roman texts that refer to the practice but sadly they don't offer any explanations either.

The first text that alludes to 'blessing' a sneeze is Erasmus's Familiar Colloquies , , in a section headed 'Forms of well-wishing':. To one that Sneezes. May it be lucky and happy to you. God keep you.