Happy Women's Day!

Sure enough, it's once again March 8th and International Women's Day.

Wishing each of you a wonderful day male or female alike--or I guess if you're forgetful this is a reminder to call your mother or buy that special girl in your life flowers or if you don't buy into holidays like this make her a card, leave her a note or make sure that you do the dishes.

This is however a holiday, I've never celebrated and as a result I don't know much about it. I'd like to know more about it but I don't.  What I do know a lot about is Mother's Day--which is the second Sunday of May in the States. As kids, we'd make breakfast in bed for my MoM and then get in bed with her and eat it. Yep, we were pretty awesome kids and she's a pretty awesome mom. Something about this family tradition strikes me as not very Bulgarian--maybe because we always made pancakes, waffles or cinnamon rolls with a side of bacon or sausage and scrambled eggs fro breakfast.

[caption id="attachment_2285" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="Flowers for Women&#39;s Day "]<a href="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/dsc01586.jpg"><img class="size-full wp-image-2285" title="Flowers for Women's Day " src="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/dsc01586.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="375" /></a>[/caption]

Anyhow, back to Women's Day.  <!--more-->I truly know nothing about this holiday aside from the fact that men give women flowers but rather than this day being limited to only mothers it's a little more equal opportunity as it's a day for all women. <em>That's nice</em>.

I also think that it's some how related to communism but I don't know why I think that.

A quick good search turned up this:
<blockquote>The International Women's Day established itself as an official holiday in Bulgaria with the arrival of the Socialist regime in Bulgaria in 1944, but its popularity grew immensely in the 1960s. Nowadays the holiday is mostly about paying a tribute to mothers.</blockquote>
Ahh, so, I've clearly made the connection between Women's Day and communism because of this.  It's still unclear to me if this is a socialist holiday or just a European holiday that we've deliberately chosen not to celebrate in the States. Or maybe Hallmark just couldn't co-opt this holiday.  Hard to say.

I am told that the flower sellers here in Bulgaria mark up all of the prices of flowers for this holiday because men are expected to buy flowers for the women in their lives.  That to me is very funny, very Bulgarian and a great take on capitalism.

Today, there are lots of different kinds of flowers available but I've also heard that during communism the only flowers that were available on this day were daffodils and that men would stand in long lines waiting for them. Hum. I like daffodils.