Santa’s Snotty List

‘Tis the season of a lot of things. ‘Tis the season of joy; ‘tis the season of cold; ‘tis the season of festivities; and ‘tis even the season of hot chocolate.
‘Tis also the season of hacking and coughing, sneezing and wheezing, and bed-ridden fellows, stricken with disease.
‘Tis still the holiday of cheer but beware of the launched mucus released from nowhere.
Sneezing and wheezing come in many different forms, to the point that it’s almost an art. We have the infamous dad sneeze that shakes walls. We have the tiny, scared sneeze of someone who doesn’t want to draw attention to themself. We even have the random sneeze that comes with no warning and leaves everyone around shocked.
One can tell a lot about another person based on their type of sneeze. Usually, we assume that they’re sick.
Winter months, normally associated with Christmas carols and happy children, are also the months when diseases that thrive in the cold are spread. People are inside more and generally closer together, clinging to the last vestiges of warmth. Plus, the air is drier, causing our nasal passages to dry up, making it easier to catch a cold.
These colds lead to more people missing school, work, or anything else mildly more enjoyable. Like socializing. More than any other disease, according to the page on common colds on the Johns Hopkins website. The experts at Johns Hopkins also say that the common cold is caused by over 200 different viruses and is not caused by getting wet or staying out in the cold.
These colds cause sneezing, and no small amount either.
Sneezing is the body’s way of expelling anything, from dust to pollen to germs, all of which irritate the mucus membranes that line the body’s throat and nose.
Humans have been sneezing for a long time. All of time, in fact. A paper published in the Current Biology Journal showed that sea sponges, one of the oldest things on earth (and something we’re incredibly distantly related to by way of our time as weird cell-things at the bottom of the ocean at the beginning of time) sneeze. It’s one of the oldest tricks in nature’s book.
Having been sneezing for such a long time, we’ve perfected certain elements of the sneeze. We’ve learned that by saying “bless you” after they sneeze, so that a person won’t die of the plague, which is the most popular theory as to the origin of that phrase. We’ve also mastered different forms of sneezing. Some choose a simple, quiet sneeze that doesn’t disturb anyone. Others opt for the more traditional louder but respected sneeze that gets the job done in one or two bursts.
By far the most eventful and extraordinary sneeze is the dad sneeze. Created and perfected by fathers around the world, it is unique among all the arts of sneezing in that it completely disregards the very lives of those around it. It commences with a massive buildup of air, as he squints at the sun, signaling bystanders to take cover. Then, like a rocket, the irritants are ejected, with sound waves crashing around whatever structure the dad happens to be in. This is then repeated a second or even third time. Such an event is a miracle to experience without going deaf.
Dad sneezes can even be so violent that it’s not unheard of to pop a rib. Penn Medicine says however that it’s usually so minor that the body will quickly fix itself. Still, such sneezes only come from true masters of their work.
Now sneezing has had some memorable moments. From being the cause of all the side-eyes during a stressful test to meaning that said person had just announced they were infected with a zombie virus during COVID, sneezing has accompanied us throughout our long history of being infected with disease.
Luckily, we invented a genius way to prevent spreading germs from a sneeze: cover your mouth with your elbow. We should all make use of this brilliant invention this winter.