'Gesundheit' is German for 'good health!'

pronounced -ger-suund-hite

Small demons are constantly floating around us and like another commentator said, waiting to rush into our open mouths and seize our soul. The sneeze separates our soul from our body but saying, bless you to the sneezie makes the demon draw back in fear of an angel of the lord attacking the demon for trying to steal the soul. See, a very simple answer to a problem that plagues mankind.

"Cover your mouth and wash your hands"......if anything at all.

Sometimes I respond to a sneeze with, "You are so good looking."

Athiests already have a different place in community. We have to be nice.Saying a bless you is okay. It equal to wishing thier well being

You could ask her, "You want me to stop the Devil from stealing your soul?"

It was once believed that the soul separated from the body when you sneezed, so the blessing was added to stop the Devil from grabbing it.

That seemed to have come about because it was believed that the soul temporarily left the body when someone sneezed and the devil could get in - So quite a lot of believing to be done there!

Cover your mouth, l just washed this shirt!

I am German - we say "Gesundheit". Which means "I wish you good health". I stick to this in English.

I've always said gesundheit, which means good health

I say "A tes souhaits". In french it means "All best wishes (to your health)";
so I guess you could use "Santé" ?

"God bless" is fine with me. It's simply a reflexive response based upon long custom and most often involves as little thought or significance for most folks as that they usually give to the words they intone as the Lord's Prayer or, I'm guessing, the pledge of allegiance.

I aay the Spanish "Salud!

WTF, where the hell did THAT come from?

Go for "Gesundheid "

I say you are sooo good lookin'.

A patronizing 'Bleeeeeeeeeees!' god is meaningless so is all the language and phrases associated with it. I say for 'For god's/christ's sake', 'For the love of god' 'God knows?'......it doesn't mean anything, I also find the words 'god' and 'fuck' inter-changeble

It's part of our social order that we generally offer something when someone sneezes. It's more about manners and less about the religious undertones. Saying, "bless you" doesn't necessarily translate to "see you at church on Sunday." Rather, it's just a friendly gesture. That's why we normally just say "thanks" in response instead of something more Godly.

Playing devil's advocate, I'm a proponent of removing all religion related phrases, traditions, displays, etc. Maybe it's time we challenge the status quo. Perhaps, we need to find a secular way to respond to a sneeze. Or, maybe we do as suggested and say nothing at all. How often do you acknowledge a cough or hiccup? Why is a sneeze different?

Cover your mouth

What me and the 3 kids actually do is yell... Ahhhh! And duck for cover... especially with the youngest daughter.

“ May your gods not be disappointed in you! “

Since a sneeze spews thousands of germs it is a good idea to tell someone to cover their mouth. Bless you goes back to the ignorant and superstitious notion that the devil would try to enter person after a sneeze when in fact the person was potentially spreading disease to others.

Atta boiiiii!

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This is about as far from the biggest problem I have with religion as you can get. There are about 100 things that you could say that don’t include God, all of them better than an awkward silence. I tend to go with, salute.