No one blesses me when I fart, burp, cough, sniffle, gag, hawk phlegm or clear my throat.
So leave me alone when I sneeze. Don' t bless me, don't gesundheit me, don' t even pay attention. Quit harrassing my bodily functions. Mind your own effing business.
And don't laugh when I hiccup. Leave it alone...let it go...
This message has been edited. Last edited by: hydragoat,
Hey, sneezing is different from everything else - that's how people always treated it. From the very old times some ancient peoples considered it a good sign. In Anabasis by Xenophon there is a place when one of the soldiers sneezes and everybody cheer up, because it was considered a sign that gods will help and everything is going be OK. Here in Armenia (coeval of Greece) we don't say bless you; we say "health to you." And if somebody sneezes while speaking or while somebody else is speaking, then we say smth like "that's right!" or "so true!" That comes from ancient times when it was believed that sneeze means truth is spoken or that what was said will actually happen.
------- "And it is not just a business. It’s a love affair." Paul B.K. Garmirian about making cigars
i never say bless you to anyone else, and I never acknowledge when someone "blesses" me...
just the other day a coworker blessed me and I said (jokingly) "I don't believe in your god, stop trying to push your religion on me" needless to say, it stopped, hah
Blessing someone when they sneeze comes from 3 places:
1: It was thought that sneezing was an early sign that you had contracted the "black death" AKA the plague, so they blessed you.
2: There were early thoughts that your heart stopped when you sneezed, so you were blessed to make sure your heart starts again
3:sneezing was a sign of evil/death/satan something bad, coming from your body.
when I was a kid, I had a bulgarian friend who blessed people after the farted.. we all thought he was weird.. needless to say, his nickname was the assman
