Happy holiday!

Happy holiday to all those engaged in education and science! 

The Day of Bulgarian Education and Culture and of Slavonic Literacy is a Bulgarian national holiday celebrated on 24 May. We mark it with processions and cultural events.

On this day in Bulgaria, Bulgarian education and culture are celebrated, together with the creation of the Glagolitic alphabet by Cyril and Methodius, also known as the "Thessalonian Brothers", BGNES reports.

Cyril and Methodius recorded the first translations of the Holy Scriptures in the Glagolitic alphabet. The earliest known evidence of the celebration of the holiday was found in an Armenian chronicle of 1813, which mentions a celebration of the holy brothers on 22 May 1803 in Shumen.

For the first time, on 11 May 1851, a holiday of Cyril and Methodius, the creators of the Glagolitic alphabet, was organised at the diocesan school "Sts Cyril and Methodius" in Plovdiv on the initiative of Nayden Gerov. The date of 11 May was not chosen by Nayden Gerov by chance: it is the common church feast day of the two saints.

In the literature of our National Revival, the first reports of the celebration of Cyril and Methodius on 11 May are found in the "Христоматия славянского язъка" of 1852 by Neofit Rilski.

In 1857 the day of the "holy brothers" was honoured in the Bulgarian church "St Stephen" in Constantinople, together with a service for St John of Rila. The following year, 1858, the day was also celebrated in Plovdiv with a solemn service in the church "Holy Mother of God", after which the teacher Yoakim Gruev delivered a moving speech on the life and work of Cyril and Methodius.

The holiday began to be observed regularly in Shumen and Lom, and from 1860 also in Skopje.

From 1863, 11 May was established as the church feast of the holy Equals-to-the-Apostles Cyril and Methodius.

In Sofia the holiday was organised by the teacher Sava Filaretov.

During the struggles for church independence from the beginning of the 18th century, the historical work of Cyril and Methodius was not only an inspiration but also a case against the Greek Ecumenical Patriarchate. It became a symbol of future independence, as Hristo Botev notes in one of his articles.

The holiday went beyond the church and school framework of its observance and became a national holiday.

After 1878 the celebration of Cyril and Methodius developed in two directions. In free Bulgaria it was limited to a school holiday. In Macedonia and the Edirne region, however, it retained its function as a demonstration of Bulgarian identity in the struggle against Turkish rule, as well as against the assimilationist aspirations of Serbian and Greek propaganda.

The holiday of Cyril and Methodius acquired particular significance after the First World War.

With the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in 1916, the holiday, observed by the state and the church, came to be celebrated on a single day, 24 May.

After 1969 secularisation took place through the separation of the church calendar from the secular one, and therefore today there are two holidays: a church one (11 May) and a secular one (24 May). 24 May was declared an official holiday of the People's Republic of Bulgaria by a decision of the Ninth National Assembly on 30 March 1990, and since 15 November 1990 it has been an official holiday of the Republic of Bulgaria, when the People's Republic of Bulgaria was renamed the Republic of Bulgaria.

24 May is also marked in Russia as the holiday of Slavonic literacy and of the holy brothers Cyril and Methodius.