The Day of the People's Enlighteners emerged during the difficult period of spiritual turmoil following World War I. For Bulgarian society, the Renaissance ideal had collapsed. For many, the real threat of disintegration of our national value system was evident.
In such a moment, Bulgarians chose to draw from the experience of their own society. They looked toward the brightest names in Bulgarian spiritual history. They sought connection with those who, in difficult and seemingly hopeless times, through the power of their thought restored balance and spiritual stability to the Bulgarian people.
November 1st is a nationwide Bulgarian holiday of historical memory and national consciousness, upheld year after year throughout centuries of slavery, violence, and national suffering – the work of hundreds and thousands of known and unknown Bulgarians – intellectuals, teachers and educators who instilled in the darkness of foreign oppression faith in the people's own strength on the path toward the historical restoration of Bulgarian statehood.
November 1st is chosen – the day of Saint Ivan of Rila – as a new, but in fact well-known holiday.
The Day of the People's Enlighteners was celebrated for the first time in 1909 in Plovdiv.
On October 31, 1922, the government of Alexander Stamboliyski proposed a Law to amend the Law on Holidays. The initiator of this change was the then Minister of Public Education Stoyan Omarchevski, to whom belong the words:
'Let the Day of Saint John of Rila become the Day of the People's Enlighteners, a holiday of great Bulgarians, in order to awaken in young people a sound sense of existence and interest in the figures of our past.'
On December 13, 1922, the XIXth National Assembly passed the Law.
November 1st was celebrated officially for the first time in 1923, being declared a national holiday in memory of deserving Bulgarians by decree of Tsar Boris III.
In 1945 the holiday was banned.
Its celebration was renewed by the Law to amend the Labour Code, passed by the 36th National Assembly on October 28, 1992, when it was officially declared the Day of the People's Enlighteners and a non-attendance day for all educational institutions in the country.
The motives of the government, in which Stoyan Omarchevski was minister, for introducing the holiday are as follows:
'Before the war, education and upbringing in our schools was directed toward a deliberate and systematic development among the student youth of national and patriotic virtues on the one hand, and civic and cultural ones on the other.
Love and respect for ancient Bulgarian culture, reverence for the figures and builders of our national faith, striving and emulation toward the good and beautiful, enthusiasm for the ideal – these were dear, sympathetic phenomena that by their very nature moved hearts and made life pleasant, meaningful, and profoundly purposeful.
These virtues, instilled in the souls of generations over entire decades, were shaken by the negative consequences of war, first of all in society itself, and from there – the reflection of negative manifestations among the student youth. The latter became captivated by
- the everyday, the entertaining and the easy in life;
- freedom, carelessness and frivolity took hold of their souls
and gradually they moved away from what is valuable and essential in life and the past.
But in the twilight of our past are revealed the great figures of many great Bulgarians,
- who with extraordinary dedication and admirable self-sacrifice served their people;
- who spared neither strength nor youth to lay the foundations of our cultural and political life.
From Paisius onward to our days follow the bright and luminous images of great cultural and social figures, distant and near builders of modern Bulgaria.'