Today, April 23rd, is a Catalan holiday called La Diada de Sant Jordi (Saint George's Day), also known as El dia de la Rosa (The Day of the Rose) or El dia del Llibre (World Book Day).
It shares some similarities to Valentine's Day. Indeed, the main event is the exchange of gifts between loved ones. Historically, men gave women roses, and women gave men a book to celebrate the occasion. In modern times, though, the mutual exchange of roses and/or books might be performed anyway regardless of the gender.
While roses have been associated with this day since medieval times, the giving of books is a more recent tradition originating in 1923, when a bookseller started to promote the holiday as a way to commemorate the nearly simultaneous deaths of Miguel de Cervantes and William Shakespeare on April 23rd, 1616.
Catalonia exported this tradition of the book and the rose to the rest of the world: in 1995, UNESCO adopted April 23rd as the World Book Day.
This year, my gift was a book I had been waiting to own for some time now:
These days are not being easy for Mayim Bialik. If yesterday I was writing about those sad things that happen in life, today I do about the positive facts that I share with her, like Judaism and Vegetarianism:
Back to the book, I cannot wait to start trying the recipes and let you all know about it.
By chance, Yom Ha'atzmaut - the national day of Israel, which commemorates the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948 - is also being celebrated today. And ain't a coincidence that Jews are known as the People of the Book? ;-)
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