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Christmas is second only to Easter as the holiday most likely to attract churchgoers. In the coming weeks, more people than usual will be filing into churches big and small, and many of those parishioners will be taking Communion.

The overlap of the religious rite with cold and flu season raises an uncomfortable question: Is receiving Communion sanitary?

Many Communion practices fly in the face of the day-to-day precautions most educated adults ordinarily take to prevent illness. A recent New Yorker article chronicled how hand sanitizer has become one of the fastest growing industries in America, thanks to increased awareness and concern about the spread of germs.

Taking Communion is one of the most sacred acts of the Christian faith. Bread and wine (often grape juice, these days) are consumed as tribute to Jesus Christ, with the wine (or juice) viewed as symbolic of his blood and the bread his body, and the sacrifice he made through his crucifixion. It also serves as a remembrance of his Last Supper, hence the term the Lord's Supper to refer to Communion.

Communion practices vary by denomination and even by individual parishes. Many evangelical churches pass trays of tiny individual cups of grape juice and a separate tray containing bread pieces or wafers, said Elesha Coffman, an assistant professor of church history at Iowa's University of Dubuque Theological Seminary, which is Presbyterian. "Those practices did develop out of concerns about germ-sharing about a century ago," she said.

But some churches still rely on older methods for administering the sacrament. Specifically, the cup-sharing method, in which one chalice is filled and re-used by all parishioners. (Here is a recent video of the practice in an Episcopal church. Skip ahead to around 44 minutes in.)

Debra, a New York-based lawyer who grew up in the Episcopal Church, said the practice has never bothered her. But it does trouble her children, who spent much of their early lives in the Baptist Church, where the individual-cups method is the norm. She said when they attended an Episcopal service and were asked to drink from a common cup, "They absolutely refused to take Communion," fearing germs. When asked if the potential for germ-sharing bothered her, she scoffed: "Not at all."

"During flu season, it's a bad idea,"said Elaine Larson, an associate dean at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. "The problem is flu is contagious about 24 hours before there are symptoms."

Source: The Daily Beast | Keli Goff