According to the bit in today’s news, the Germans counterattacked in Russia during the two previous Decembers. It’s not likely that Patton would have had these episodes in mind. In particular, the December 1943 attack seems to have been minor
Right. From what I can tell, the surprise was a a failure of intelligence and a fledgling intelligence agency (the OSS) but not because a major winter attack was a recognizable pattern.
The December 43 attack involved the better part of XLVIII and XXIV Panzer Corps, and was most of the mobile striking power on the southern half of the German front. It made some progress in hard fighting, but by then the Germans were too weak to do more than gain a hard fought local success against a much larger Soviet opponent. It may well have been the memory of this operation that helped influence Hitler to launch his decisive attack in the west.