According to the folk calendar - Andrey Zimny

According to the folk calendar, December 13 (November 30, old style) is the day of St Andrew the Winter This holiday comes from the Orthodox day of veneration of the Apostle Andrew the First-Called Being the first disciple of the twelve apostles who followed Jesus Christ, he became the closest And after the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, Andrei headed to the eastern lands to spread the Christian faith Founded in the future Constantinople, the apostle created a church for Christians During his procession, Andrei was more than once subjected to violence from the pagans, but continued to spread the word about Christ Through prayer, a follower of Jesus could heal the terminally ill The pagan ruler Egeat treated the apostle as a madman and ordered him to be hung on a crucifix The people, outraged by the ruler's decision, forced the martyr to be removed But Andrei himself wished for death from the Lord, then his cross was illuminated with heavenly radiance and the soul of the righteous departed to heaven The female part of the population prayed to Saint Andrew for a happy family life Healers and healers revered the day of Andrew as the day of their patron They wove a wreath of speedwell grass and put it on the head of a person suffering from bad thoughts This herb helped as a talisman against the influence of the evil one For children with poor sleep, it was placed under the pillow to get rid of nightmares People believed that from this day a kind of rehearsal began before the main Christmas fortune-telling Therefore, unmarried girls arranged mysterious fortune telling for their betrothed Andrei's night could show a girl the face of her future husband in a dream; to do this, she had to put a piece of bread, baked with her own hands, under the pillow The guys went out into the street at night with a bowl of water and listened to its sounds; they could tell the name of their betrothed The rest of the peasants also listened to the water that day We went to a pond and made a hole in the ice Leaning over, we listened to the state of the water If there were restless noises in the ice hole, people were preparing for a blizzard winter, and if everything was calm, then the winter was predicted to be quiet Signs such as falling snow on the day of St Andrew the Winter foreshadowed that he would lie on the ground for more than three months Crackling coal in the stove or a cat taking a long time to wash itself meant that frost was ahead Frosts were still expected if they saw a reddened fire in the stove, but a white fire meant warming A future good harvest was determined by a cold sunny day, and a bad one by a warm cloudy day