Growing up in Eastern Europe, there was no avoiding March 8. It was an official holiday, though still a workday (only in the USSR did people get a day off from school and work). It has also evolved over time into an incredibly kitchy holiday, a combined crass commercialized equivalent of Mother's Day and Valentine's Day, despised by feminist women for the hypocrisy of the essentially patriarchal society which used this day to put a woman on a pedestal for a day instead of barking orders to the kitchen for another bottle of beer.
See more history of the holiday on Wikipedia, the official 2007 ceebration site, and an American feminist perspective from Shakespeare's Sister
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