24th May Day of Slavonic Writting and
Culture
On 24-th of May as an old tradition we in Bulgaria celebrate the
Day of Slavonic/Slavic Writting and Culture.
It's quite of feast, the streets are full of people and everybody
wents out to celebrate or have a walk as the whole day atmosphere
is extremely cheerful.
Until some years during communism on 24th of may was also a Church
feast
day of st. Cyril and Methodius, however since some
years the Bulgarian Orthodox Church decided to commemorate the two
saints on a different date.
However the secular educational tradition of remembering the two
saints memory on today's date next to considering the holiday as
the official feast of triumph of educational enlightenment and
science is still alive in the primary and secondary schools.
24th of May is also considered as the official day of Bulgarian
and Slavonic Writting and Culture.
The two saints Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius are considered to be
patron saints protector of all Schools, universities and
educational institutions in Bulgaria.
On this date it's common that a bit of secular icon images of the
two saints to be holded in a public schools manifestation, where
specially dressed pupils play music with trombones and drums and
all teachers and students does a manifestation lined in a column in
the streets (this tradition is a hermitage from communistic times
as manifestation on major celebrations were a common thing during
the communism years, when Bulgaria was part of the USSR).
24th of May is considered maybe the brightest public feast in
Bulgaria, even the secular atheist and unbelievers connect the day
of 24th May celebrations with St. St. Cyril and Methodius
who historically are the founders/inventors of the Slavonic
writting letter and thus highly respected among all Orthodox
Christian slavonic nations and as far as I know even are being
known and venerated in some countries in the Roman Catholic western
world (I'll be glad to hear if some western people who are
subscribed to my blog, give some reports if they know the two
patron saints of Slavonic Culture.
Many cities in Bulgaria has an official local city feast on 24th of
May. Dobrich my home city also marks off it's public holiday on
24th of May.
Many small and middle sized villages also does celebrate heavily on
this date, as the so called (people gatherings / (sbor as we call
them in Bulgaria)) are occuring on this date.
On this assemblies, where people goes out to buy stuff, we have a
lot of gipsies who sell a various hand-made food as well some
gipsies home-made children toys :)
It's very pity I have no picture to show you what kind of bulk
stuff the gipsies are selling via an improvised made kiosks
especially for the fesat.
The gipsies sales all kind of weird food especially for the holiday
like, (pink ice-cream, all colors sugar-cotton and pink cream, pink
sugar sticks (shiker as we call it) and a tons of other weird foods
you cannot see anywhere else)).
I'm quite convinced that every foreigner will truly enjoy this
feast of ours and I recommend, if you're about to come to Bulgaria
to try to be in our country on this feast, it's truly wild and
natural as it is and always was in the bolkans ! :)
It's also traditional on this date of triumph of culture that many
cultural events around the country occurs, as well as the
traditional folklore performers and dancers perform on the cities
centres.
Horo (Bulgarian Traditional Folklore Dance on a city centre)
To generalize 24-th of May is our greatest and brightest holidays
here in Bulgaria, there is some kind of established believe that on
this date the weather is always nice. This year this national
believe come true, as we have a wonderful sunny day here in
Bulgaria :).