where does bless you after a sneeze come from
God bless you
The practice of blessing someone who sneezes dates as far back as at least AD 77 , although it is far older than most specific explanations can account for . Some have offered an explanation suggesting that people once held the folk belief that a person 's soul could be thrown from their body when they sneezed , that sneezing otherwise opened the body to invasion by the Devil or evil spirits , or that sneezing was the body 's effort to force out an invading evil presence . In these cases , `` God bless you '' or `` bless you '' is used as a sort of shield against evil . The Irish Folk story `` Master and Man '' by Thomas Crofton Croker , collected by William Butler Yeats , describes this variation . Moreover , in the past some people may have thought that the heart stops beating during a sneeze , and that the phrase `` God bless you '' encourages the heart to continue beating . 
The practice of blessing someone who sneezes dates as far back as at least AD 77 , although it is far older than most specific explanations can account for . Some have offered an explanation suggesting that people once held the folk belief that a person 's soul could be thrown from their body when they sneezed , that sneezing otherwise opened the body to invasion by the Devil or evil spirits , or that sneezing was the body 's effort to force out an invading evil presence . In these cases , `` God bless you '' or `` bless you '' is used as a sort of shield against evil . The Irish Folk story `` Master and Man '' by Thomas Crofton Croker , collected by William Butler Yeats , describes this variation . Moreover , in the past some people may have thought that the heart stops beating during a sneeze , and that the phrase `` God bless you '' encourages the heart to continue beating .
The practice of blessing someone who sneezes dates as far back as at least AD 77 . Some have offered an explanation suggesting that people once held the folk belief that a person 's soul could be thrown from their body when they sneezed , that sneezing otherwise opened the body to invasion by the Devil or evil spirits , or that sneezing was the body 's effort to force out an invading evil presence . In these cases , `` God bless you '' or `` bless you '' is used as a sort of shield against evil . Moreover , in the past some people may have thought that the heart stops beating during a sneeze , and that the phrase `` God bless you '' encourages the heart to continue beating .
The practice of blessing someone who sneezes dates as far back as at least AD 77 , although it is far older than most specific explanations can account for . Some have offered an explanation suggesting that people once held the folk belief that a person 's soul could be thrown from their body when they sneezed , that sneezing otherwise opened the body to invasion by the Devil or evil spirits , or that sneezing was the body 's effort to force out an invading evil presence . In these cases , `` God bless you '' or `` bless you '' is used as a sort of shield against evil . Moreover , in the past some people may have thought that the heart stops beating during a sneeze , and that the phrase `` God bless you '' encourages the heart to continue beating .