What’s the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring vernal equinox? It’s Easter. More specifically, it’s the Sunday after the Paschal Full Moon or Pink Moon, and this year, it’s coming late on April 20. It’s the latest day Easter will occur until 2030, when it falls on April 21. Due to taking into account ecclesiastical dates for the equinox and astronomical dates, Easter is called a “movable feast.” And for curious reasons, that feast often includes colorful, hard-boiled eggs and decorative bunnies.
At Easter, people in the United States often celebrate with chocolate rabbits in baskets. And there are frequently stories about how the holiday has pagan origins. Yet, if you fall down the rabbit hole, you find the reason for all the bunnies is a relatively recent phenomenon. And we might just as well celebrate with an Easter fox, stork, rooster, lamb, or Cuckoo bird! Let’s see why that’s actually a charming custom compared to the alternatives.
The Origins of Easter Bunnies
It’s often repeated that Easter Bunnies are pagan and related to an Anglo-Saxon goddess named Eostre. But upon closer inspection, this story seems to fall apart like a badly woven basket. Instead, the first reference to her in relation to Easter bunnies was in 1682 by a German doctor named Georg Franck von Franckenau.
Correction: it was an Easter hare that was part of celebrations in the Holy Roman Empire. Kids would hunt the eggs, and adults imaginatively told them the Easter Hare had hidden them there for them to find. Later, the Pennsylvania Dutch brought the folk custom to the United States.
American artist Johan Conrad Gilbert painted the first folk art whimsical examples of the Easter bunny after he arrived in 1757. Why? Rabbits were much more common than hares in the United States.
By the late 1800s, the Easter bunnies caught on, and confectioners selling Easter eggs began selling more bunnies, too. Due to the arrival of German immigrants with their customs, the bunnies became part of mainstream culture. Thus, we can say these bunnies are an enduring symbol of the lasting influence immigrants have on our cultural celebrations, like the Christmas tree or Halloween. Their contributions and customs forever change and enrich us.
Pulling Rabbits From an Easter Bonnet
As for the goddess Eostre, or Ostara, there is virtually no historical evidence of her, much less her bunny sidekick. Only an English monk, Venerable Bede, wrote of her in 725 CE. He claimed the month of April, Eosturmonath, was named in her honor in England. However, the word Eostre points to a possible meaning of “East,” possibly related to the dawn’s arrival in the East, which makes sense in relation to the Spring equinox.
If you watch the video below, you can see it’s possible Eostre was related to worship in just one small part of England. However, we don’t know for sure. Thus, folklore about her and the bunny has been drawn from imaginative speculation as if out of a hat or Easter Bonnet. Nevertheless, the fact that these stories are so persistent and that millions of people observe Easter with bunnies is remarkable in itself. And, maybe, we need these whimsical stories.
Video by Religion For Breakfast:
Alternative Easter Bunnies
Why has the Easter bunny become such a popular symbol of a religious holiday associated with the Resurrection? Well, it’s a lighthearted story that’s purely fun and not connected with the themes of crucifixion and returning from the dead in a cave. In that context, it’s easy to see why we have Easter bunnies!
If you think about it, one can easily see how Easter celebrations could take on a feeling like the festivals of the Day of the Dead. For those prone to dark humor, they might call it celebrating “Zombie Jesus.” In orthodox faiths, the idea of an individual’s metaphorical spiritual evolution and resurrection isn’t encouraged or even allowed.
In comparison to that, what a lighthearted thing an Eater bunny is!
However, we may just as well celebrate with other cute animals, too. According to Dr. Peter Gainsford, Germany had many such choices to pick from:
“Different animals appear in the folklore of Easter egg delivery in different parts of Germany. The best-known is the Easter Fox, attested in northern Germany into the early 1900s, and the only rabbit alternative to have its own Wikipedia article. However, the Easter Stork is still a regular Easter visitor in Franconia (that is, in Thüringen and northern Bavaria). There are reports of several other birds, too: the Easter Cuckoo in Switzerland, the Easter Chicken in the Tirol, and the Easter Rooster in Schleswig-Holstein.”
Other traditions include an Eastern Bilby, a type of bandicoot from Australia, where introduced rabbits are seen as destructive to crops. The bilby looks like a large rodent with bunny ears.
And, there’s also a dessert cake baked in the form of a lamb called the Das Gebackene Osterlamm, or Baked Easter Lamb. So you see, there are numerous ways to celebrate Easter, although you may not have haven’t heard of the Easter Bilby until now. Maybe, we need to see these alternatives to bunnies more often? And have more fun this spring because the world can definitely use lightening up more than ever.
