According to the folk calendar - Mina Day

December 23 (December 10, old style) is the day of Mina according to the folk calendar Its origin comes from the church holiday of the holy martyr Mina the Eloquent, who served as a secret preacher of Christianity Mina served as a military commander for the pagan emperor Maximian in the 4th century When popular unrest began between Christians and pagans in Alexandria, the ruler sent the eloquent Mina there to resolve the problems The unrest was calmed, but Mina secretly denounced idolatry and glorified Christianity The people believed him and accepted the faith of Christ Having learned about what he had done, the emperor sent his subject Hermogenes to punish Mina After much torture, the saint managed to convince Hermogenes to become a Christian Then Maximian personally came to deal with his traitors He ordered both of them to be beheaded, and personally killed Mina’s assistant Evgraf with a sword People believed that after the day of Mina the Eloquent, the daylight hours began to increase slightly According to legend, the holy martyr protected the population from twilight After sunset, a veil of darkness shrouded a person’s eyelids, his concepts of good and evil, truth and lies were distorted, preventing him from leading a righteous life It was Mina who helped a person to see clearly and escape the temptations of evil spirits They turned to him with prayers as a healer of human vision Also on the day of Mina, rituals were performed to relieve bad sleep in children A healer was brought to a child who slept restlessly, screamed in his sleep or cried She read conspiracies against evil spirits, driving them away from her childhood sleep If on the day of Mina the peasants noticed sunny weather, then frosts were expected The twinkling stars in the sky also promised cold weather Birds flying close to the house and hiding under the roof foreshadowed an approaching snowstorm The drizzling rain predicted that the weather would be similar in the spring