On May 11, 1851, in Plovdiv, the Bulgarian writer and linguist Nayden Gerov officially organized the first celebration in honor of the holy brothers Cyril and Methodius.
The celebration took place in the diocesan school named after the creators of the Glagolitic script.
The date was chosen because it was the common church holiday of the two saints. In the Renaissance sources, the first notices of the celebration of Cyril and Methodius on May 11 are found in the “Christomatiya slavyanskogo yazyka“ from 1852. by Neofit Rilski.
The Plovdiv Diocesan School, known as the First Boys' High School, is also the first in the world to be named after the brothers Cyril and Methodius. The story of how it got its name is very interesting. "Dr. Stoyan Chomakov and I were gathered at the house of chorbadji Salcha Chomakov, and the question arose as to what name to give the school. I told about what the holy brothers had done, and chorbadji Salcho was delighted with their work. So by common consent we named the school "St. Cyril and Methodius" and we ordered an icon with the image of the saints. The holiday had to be celebrated. The school introduced this holiday, which has remained to be celebrated in the future. Following the example of the people of Plovdiv, many places throughout Bulgaria later began to name their schools after the two holy brothers," says Nayden Gerov in 1894. in his memoirs.
In 1856, Joakim Gruev proposed that the day of Cyril and Methodius be celebrated as a holiday for Bulgarian students. In 1857, the holiday was honored in the Bulgarian church "St. Stephen" in Constantinople along with a service for St. Ivan Rilski. The following year, 1858, this day was also celebrated in Plovdiv with a solemn service in the church "St. Mary", and then the teacher Joakim Gruev delivered a moving speech about the life and work of Cyril and Methodius.
The Bulgarians themselves also initially considered it unusual to celebrate the day of the Holy Brothers and only in the fourth or fifth year of the first celebration did they begin to come for the celebrations. Subsequently, more and more people joined the celebrations, especially when Plovdiv acquired a Bulgarian church in 1860.
In the years that followed, May 11 began to be solemnly celebrated in the Bulgarian church "St. Stephen" in Constantinople, again in Plovdiv in the church "St. Mary" (with a speech by Joakim Gruev), in Shumen, Lom, Skopje and Sofia. The holiday began to be regularly celebrated in Shumen and Lom, from 1860, in Skopje from 1862, in Varna from 1863.
After the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in 1916, the holiday was celebrated on May 24 according to the official state calendar, and according to the church liturgical calendar, this day is dated May 11. In 1968 The Bulgarian Orthodox Church, now with the status of a patriarchate, introduced the so-called New Julian calendar as a liturgical calendar, which eliminated the error of the old Julian calendar. Thus, the day of Cyril and Methodius is honored by the Church on May 11 according to the church calendar. However, due to the already established civil tradition, the secular, civil and state celebration remains on May 24, recalls the newspaper "Maritsa".
On May 11, 1901, the song "Vorvi, narode vazrodeni" was performed for the first time in Lovech as a festive hymn in praise of the work of Cyril and Methodius and of Bulgarian enlightenment. In 1902 on the Day of Bulgarian Education and Culture and Slavic Writing, the song is taken up and sung by all schools in the country.
After the advent of totalitarian power, the song was subjected to the obligatory ideological corrections. Some verses were changed, the mention of God and the apostles was removed. Entire stanzas were completely removed from the readings.
It was only in the 1990s, after the democratic changes in the country, that the possibility of quoting the original text was restored. Traditionally, only the first six of the fourteen stanzas of the poem continue to be performed on school holidays.
May 24 was declared an official holiday of the People's Republic of Bulgaria by a decision of the Ninth National Assembly on March 30, 1990, and since November 15, 1990 it has been an official holiday of the Republic of Bulgaria.