Tag: Easter Bunny

Easter Bunnies

On Christians’ resurrection holy day, animal-rescue volunteers have an earnest plea for parents: “Please don’t get your kid a bunny for Easter.”Bunnies are cute and fluffy but require care, exercise and a specialized diet. A rabbit’s typical lifespan is about twelve years, about eleven years, eleven-and-a-half months longer than a typical family’s interest in caring for the furry pet. Animal-care groups estimate eighty percent of rabbits bought as Easter gifts will die or be abandoned within the first year.

Cannon Beach, on the Oregon Coast, is overrun with rabbits. The so-called “beach bunnies” breed like, well, rabbits. They attack garden vegetation and decorate local yards with their bunny waste. Cannon Beach residents are calling for action from the city, but the popular tourist destination does not want be known for rabbit massacres.

For an overview of how bunnies and eggs – chocolate and other – became part of Easter celebrations, take a look at this previous post.

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Jesus and the Easter Bunny

How did we go from the Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection to a bunny hiding eggs – chocolate or decorated – for the delight of children? You may not not recall any mention of it in the Gospels.

The two major Christian holidays coincidentally are observed on the change of seasons, times of celebration for much of humankind: Christmas at the winter solstice when the sun starts its return and Easter at the spring equinox, recognized from antiquity as a time of fertility. What follows may or may not be true.

Whence came the name “Easter?” It is thought to derive from a pagan figure known as Eostre who was celebrated as the goddess of fertility by the Saxons of Northern Europe. She was represented by that symbol of prolific breeding: a rabbit. There is, however no historical evidence for this.

Or maybe it’s because rabbits were thought to be hermaphrodites, able to reproduce without sex. Hence a connection with the Virgin Mary.

Eggs are an ancient symbol of new life and have been part of spring festivals for millennia.

Easter eggs are said to represent Jesus’s emergence from the tomb.

Eggs were considered forbidden during Lent. Christians decorated them to celebrate the end of fasting and ate them on Easter.

What is probably true is German immigrants to Pennsylvania in the eighteenth century brought with them stories of egg-laying(!) hares. Children made nests for the “Osterhase” to lay colored eggs. The Easter Bunny story expanded from there.

So honor the holiday that is the basis for Christianity but whose symbols have few documented origins and only the most tangential relation to Jesus Christ’s resurrection.

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