РУМЪНСКИЯТ КРАЧУН - ИМЕ НА ПРАЗНИК, МИТИЧЕН ГЕРОЙ ИЛИ ЗАБРАВЕНО БОЖЕСТВО?
The Roumanian Krachun - a name of a feast, a mythical hero or a forgotten deity?

Summary/Abstract: Who is the Roumanian Krachun? A forgotten deity, a mythical ancestor, a personification or only a name of a feast? This is the question which the presented paper seeks the answer to. Here are represented and analysed data on Krachun from different levels of folk Roumanian beliefs: specific folk notions; Christmas song tradition; legends; custom and ritual system. On all those levels a complex and multilayer character arises, comprising the unity of different and seemingly contradictory characteristics. Krachun has both chtonic and solar features. He is the absolute creator. He creates the sky and the earth, fertilizes the earth and gives life to plants and animals; he teaches people agriculture, gives them the laws of communial life, institutes the transition rites (esp. Christmas rites), and the feast of his own, i. e. heorganizes the human society. In his wholesome characteristics Krachun is similar to archaic cosmic deities of ancient religious systems of peoples, who had inhabited the cultural areal, part of which is Roumania and more precisely - the Thracian cultural koine. In the character of Krachun two different cosmogenetic notions coexist. Both of them parallel this process with his birth, maturity and aging. The difference is in the way this process takes place. According to the first version he is the son of the Great Mother Goddes, who had self-conceived and then given birth to him. Later the child deity became her husband - lover and fertlizes her. According to the second version Krachun is an androgene, who re-created the cosmogenesis by self-conception. The Christianisation of Roumanian people brought for the development of this character in two lines. First, in accordance with his narute of a cosmic deity with solarchtonic features and a son of the Great Mother Goddess, he is identified with Christian God and the God's son. And second, he opposes them and the Holy Mother and is hostile to the sacral birth-giving. He is transformed in the rich shepherd, the malicious man, the unbeliever who in the end of the story is reconciled with the Holy Mother and becomes a saint.

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