According to the folk calendar - Scary day

January 11 (December 29, old style) is celebrated as the Terrible Day according to the folk calendar People believed that on this day all the evil spirits crawled out of their bodies and ran into the street, frightened those they met and tried in every possible way to harm humanity Therefore, people avoided walking late in the evening of the Last Day Another terrible event of the day was the legend of the 14 thousand innocent babies of Bethlehem When King Herod learned of the birth in Bethlehem of a child who, according to prophecy, would become the king of kings, he was afraid of losing power and ordered the wise men to point to the newborn They refused to answer The angry ruler ordered the killing of children ranging in age from a day to a year The parents with the newborn Jesus had left the city by that time, but thousands of babies were killed For such a crime, the Almighty punished the king with a terrible fatal disease Hence the concern for children on the Last Day Parents prayed for the safety of their child, did not let their children leave the threshold of the house, and placed dried thistle under the crib as a talisman to keep evil spirits away It was believed that children's spirits visited homes with children Evil children's spirits could frighten a baby to the point of stuttering, disturb him from sleeping at night, or drag him into the forest for disobedience, while good ones protected the child's sleep In general, peasants spent this day at home, or went to visit people for gatherings, shared terrible stories and legends, which gave the name to the day The girls were going to cast a spell on their betrothed, because the time of rampant evil spirits was considered fertile for fortune telling And the children were told fairy tales and played riddles To protect houses from fires on the Last Day, healers read home conspiracies The ritual of burning things reminiscent of the problems that happened helped to get rid of diseases and misfortunes in the New Year A fireplace was set up for him in the center of the village: men dragged stakes that had been placed the day before on a high mountain, old men carried straw from their beds, and healers threw coals from their stoves and read incantations On the Terrible Day, looking at the smoke coming up from the chimney, they determined the approaching cold If it spread along the ground, a blizzard was foreshadowed If you saw that the horse was sleeping standing up, and the poultry climbed higher on the perch, you were preparing for severe frosts Snow flakes were noticed before the warming The blizzard on the Terrible Day promised a cloudy July