According to the folk calendar - Nikiforov day

On March 26 (the date according to the old calendar style is March 13), people celebrate Nikiforov Day The holiday took its name from the name of St Nikephoros of Constantinople, the iconoclast patriarch The Orthodox Church celebrates this date as the day of the discovery of the relics of the saint Nikephoros was born into a Christian family in the 8th century and received an excellent education In his youth he served at court as a royal adviser But the bustle of worldly life burdened him, he went into solitude Nikephoros prayed a lot, fasted and studied the Holy Scriptures, and years later he built a monastery near the Bosphorus When Nicephorus was offered the rank of patriarch, he took monastic vows The saint defended against iconoclasm and supported Orthodox believers For this he was imprisoned for 13 years, where he died The relics of the saint were found and sent to Constantinople only two decades later There was a popular belief that on Nikiforov's day bears woke up in their den They left their dens and wandered through the forest in search of food From the middle of winter, the bears gave birth to babies, and just in time for spring they reached three months of age and became acquainted with the world On this day, the peasants avoided going into the forest so as not to come across club-footed predators On the day of Nikifor, residents watched migratory birds, looking out for the return of geese from warmer climes If they were noticed, it means that the year promised to be rich in harvest The low flight of geese was observed to low water in the rivers, and the high flight - on the contrary, to the water overflowing the banks The return of the obese birds meant that the spring would be long and cool But geese swimming in the pond foreshadowed a sharp warming The day was considered good for fishing The ice had already melted from the rivers and lakes, so perch, roach, pike and pike perch were caught well Housewives baked pies and cooked fish soup from the catch they brought The peasants observed the signs on Nikiforov's day and determined what awaited them in the future If the sun was bright, an excellent grain harvest was expected in the summer Daytime fog foreshadowed a cloudy summer with frequent precipitation A warm wind during a thunderstorm predicted a good spring If poultry tucked its paws under itself, frost was expected at night