I live in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri, very rural, and very much within the boundaries of the Bible Belt. Of late (this goes back probably a decade) I’ve been getting the invocation from store clerks, bank tellers, etc., to “have a blessed day.” As opposed to the more common (at least, before this “blessed day” business became a thing, “have a nice day.”
This kind of chaps my hide. I mean, I understand that the clerk is just being nice in her own way. AND I understand that the idea of blessing isn’t necessarily limited to the supernatural (if I pulled over on the way home to help a guy change a tire, I’ve “blessed” him even though it didn’t come from a place of Godliness but rather just being kind). But still, this kind of irks me.
Yes, it’s a thing here, and yes, it irritates me (especially when my mother does it). I’ve decided that the proper response should be a big shiny grin and a cheerful “Damned if I do, and damned if I don’t!”, but I haven’t felt quite mean enough to do it yet.
Here it would be “Gesegneten Tag”, but I’ve never ever heard it from anybody, not even a priest or a pastor. The standard formula is “Schönen Tag noch”, which basically means “Have a nice day”.
It irritates me as well, though I generally try to take people at face value and take it in the spirit in which it is presumably given, so I typically respond with a cheery “You too!”
But it lays there like a burr under my saddle afterwards. Mainly because I have such a low opinion of the “Christians” here in the U.S. who are complete hypocrites regarding the teachings of Christ, and those people tend to match up to the ones who espouse their religion to strangers so overtly. It also strikes me as “holier than thou” and condescending.
I say “Gesundheit”, which means “(Good) Health to you” and is an act of politeness. I heard that it’s also used in English speaking countries, although not everybody will know the meaning.
No, not “blessed” (that would bug me) But a fellow at a gas station convenience store always tells me to have a wonderful day.
I’ve never in my life met such an up-beat person. Sort of bugged me at first, but hey, he’s happy. I swear he’s gonna break out in song sometime. That’s how happy this dude is.
It’s rare here, but it does happen. Like @robby it greatly reduces my estimation of that person’s character. Which is probably the opposite of their intent. And, like the OP, when I lived sorta near where he does deep in the Bible Belt, I heard it all the time. Which really chapped my hide. How dare you assume my … [whatever].
IMO saying “Have a blessed day” is about as tone deaf as telling a black person you just met “Some of my best friends are black.” They might think they’re being nice, but in fact they’re being insulting. And it’d be utterly cringeworthy in any society that wasn’t so utterly awash in assumed Xian-ness. But like fish who don’t know they’re wet, Xians don’t realized they’re all wet too, but the rest of us aren’t.
I’d like to retort “I’m going to have a fantastic day, and your religious ignorance is not going to dim it one bit.”
Instead what I really do, akin to @enipla’s storekeeper is answer in a very upbeat enthusiastic voice, “I’m going to have a fantastic day!” and stop right there. I pointed wish them exactly nothing in return, nor thank them for their unwelcome and ignorant thoughts.
I don’t know about you, but in both cultures I’ve lived as a part of, it’s considered polite when someone else sneezes to respond with a phrase that basically means, “I acknowledge your sneeze and offer my condolences for the minor inconvenience”. The same is not true of coughs, farts, hiccups, or burps where it’s culturally accepted for the cougher/farter/burper/hiccupper to say “Excuse me” instead.
The literal meaning of the phrase that means “I acknowledge your sneeze and offer my condolences for the minor inconvenience” is different between languages, but the act of acknowledging a sneeze is not.
That’s exactly what I say when a Hebrew speaker sneezes - I say “le-brieut” which means “to (good) health”.
The literal phrase changes, but the meaning is identical: “I acknowledge your sneeze and offer my condolences for the minor inconvenience”.
That, I’ve never heard in English.
It just means “have a good day”. Religious people may think that having a good day is a product of God’s will; I think that having a good day is a product of planning and preparation or, failing that, luck. I don’t believe in blessings, but I can still take the sentiment “have a good day” in the spirit it was offered.
Many Americans I’ve known use Gesundheit that way. I use it too. And IMO/IME they know the literal German meaning, although they may not know the word is came from German. It’s akin to how sautée and other similar words have entered English as de facto English words originally borrowed from elsewhere.
It might be becoming archaic. I think it was totally commonplace in my parent’s generation, but I rarely hear it from younger Americans. Then again, how often to any of us sneeze or witness one?
More than that. “Have a blessed day” assumes you - and everybody who matters - is Christian. When “microaggressions” was a popular term, this was a convenient definition and example, along with the insistence on “Merry Christmas”. Non non-Christian would ever assume it was not religiously based, even if unconsciously. If you grow up non-Christian in this country, you learn as a child that the default state of society is assumed to be Christian, and any deviation from that is gently but firmly suppressed, except on a few “welcoming” occasions. To nitpick myself before somebody else does, “have a blessed day” seems to be far more prevalent in the South, which also has been predominately Protestant. The North, from Boston to Chicago, was predominately Catholic. To insiders that seems to be a huge difference. To outsiders it’s one supergiant kettle in which we outsiders were no more than a bay leaf.
That said, I’ve never heard the expression from a retail employee here in Upstate New York. Nor do I hear the polite putdowns like “bless her heart” or “God love 'em”. “Gesundheit,” however, is used, if not exactly common, because of the massive number of German/Yiddish speaking immigrants around the turn of the 20th century. That force is dying down, so I agree with @LSL that it’s used less today.
