According to the folk calendar - Paramon Winter Guide

December 12 (November 29, old style) is the day of Paramon, the Winter Guide, according to the folk calendar On this day, Orthodox residents honor the memory of Paramon of Bithynia, who died along with 370 martyrs for the faith of Jesus Christ In 250, Emperor Trajan pursued a policy of restoring the pagan cult, thereby persecuting Christians Paramon witnessed how 370 believers in Christ were subjected to terrible torture by order of the ruler They were required to apostatize Christianity and commit idolatry Paramon accused the emperor of cruelty and declared himself a believer in the True God For such words, the saint was sent to suffer torment with the other martyrs, and after all of them were beheaded By the day of Paramon, the weather became colder, so the people believed that winter itself put on a bear’s coat, walked around the villages and woke up the housewives They, in turn, had to light the stove and prepare food It was customary to remove snow caps from roofs Cleaning was done with a broom or broom; it was forbidden to use a shovel, since it could make a hole in the roof There was a belief that on Paramonov’s day you should not be idle, otherwise winter would punish you with illness Men were busy repairing broken things or carpentry, women were busy with needlework But unmarried girls arranged fortune-telling with grain for their betrothed They did this secretly, so that winter, looking in through the window, would think that the girls were busy sorting out the cereal People noticed that if on the day of Paramon you feed buckwheat to poultry only from your right hand, then there will be more eggs from them in the future And if you hammer a nail into the bottom log of the wall on the western side of the bathhouse, then illnesses will bypass the household It was also considered obligatory to borrow some food from neighbors so that the coming year would bring good luck Paramon was called the Winter Signaler because his day predicted the weather for the coming winter Snow on this day promised a week of incessant snowstorms, and lack of snow - a week of frosts Large heavy snowflakes foreshadowed warming If there is little snow on the ground, then the harvest year will be modest A red dawn preceded clear but very windy weather