Reply #97: I'm a liberal Christian and I hate having people say it

[Lydia Leftcoast]

as a response to a sneeze.

It's really weird, but even though Oregon is the least religious state in the nation, "bless you" as a response to a sneeze was nearly universal, more so than in the more religious state of Minnesota.

It was actually annoying, because I have bad allergies, and sometimes I sneeze a lot, so if a sneezing spell happened in public or when I was with someone, each and every sneeze in the series would be echoed with, "Bless you."

It was hard for me to say anything about this, because the people actually meant well. Once I explained to one of these serial "bless you" people that the custom originated in a medieval superstition about being susceptible to the devil during a sneeze. She just looked kind of bewildered.

Otherwise, people who say "God bless you" as an expression of gratitude are often elderly people who genuinely do not understand that the culture has changed. (This is sort of like my mother thinking that being gay is caused by not having met enough attractive people of the opposite sex.)

I'll tell you a story by way of analogy. Back when I was in college, the old custom of referring to grown African-American men as "boy" was becoming unacceptable. Two black students at my college went out to shovel snow to earn some extra money. They shoveled the walk of an elderly woman who lived alone, and when they finished, she said, "Would you boys like to come in for some cookies and cocoa?"

One of the young men was about to say something about her terminology, but the other grabbed his arm and said, "Yes, that would be nice."

As they were sitting in the living room while the woman got the cookies and cocoa ready, the second student explained that she was no racist, because she had let two young black men into her house, and that she was just behind the times. (I heard this story from the girlfriend of one of the young men.)

I also recall when the newspaper of the small Oregon town I lived in interviewed some of the non-Christians (Jews, Bahais, Wiccans, atheists) to see how they reacted to Christmas celebrations. Most of them said that they simply responded to wishes of "Merry Christmas" with "Happy Holidays." They recognized that most people who said "Merry Christmas" were simply not thinking rather than trying to proselytize.