Origins of the Easter Bunny. You will be shocked!

Springtime is a wonderful time when flowers bloom, insects and animals emerge from their wintry dwellings, and Springtime celebrations happen within all cultures. In the west and among most Christian based countries, the most important event of the spring is Easter. For those who are Christians or Catholics, Easter is the second most important celebration of the year, the first being Christmas.

For those people who are not Christians or any other religion, Easter is still an important time because it signals the official beginning of Spring. It is also a nice celebration day filled with chocolates, bunnies, baby chickens, going out to the park, and meeting up with family and friends.

But if you ever took a moment and looked at all of the traditional symbols and decorations of Easter, most people have one question. What do chocolates, bunnies, and baby chickens have to do with the resurrection of Jesus Christ? Were chickens and bunnies present when the stone rolled away from Jesus's tomb? Did you just wake up on the third day in the morning of Easter Sunday and Dino and chocolate as his first meal post death?

Let’s Explore the Origins of the Easter Bunny!

For those who already know the story of Christ and the resurrection, they know ‌a bunny did not greet Jesus Christ when he walked out of his tomb. So, what does a bunny, that apparently carries eggs in a brightly colored basket, have to do with Easter?

To be honest, historians are not completely sure why the Easter Bunny is associated with Easter time or where exactly did these traditions come from. But there are a few clues that time has left for historians to discover.

Actually, the origins of the Easter bunny can be found in Germany. The name of the German Easter Bunny was called OsterHase, which literally meant Easter Hare. The hare is just another name for a rabbit.

What are the most important manuscripts that proves the existence of Easter rabbits in the German region and their tradition of passing out eggs during Easter time is the 16-page dissertation which was written by Professor Frank in 1682. The book even explains why eggs are associated with rabbits, even though rabbits do not lay eggs. The reason why Rabbits and Eggs are associated together is because the B-Rabbit eggs are simple tricks that will make children want to search for tiny eggs. The parents of these children will tell them that the Easter Hare is going to lay special eggs during Easter time. The children will get up early in the morning to search through their garden in the nearby Forest.

The German immigrants who brought their Easter tradition to the US were known as the Pennsylvania Dutch. This is an odd name to give them, since they were not Dutch at all. They were named the Pennsylvania Dutch because people, at that time, used the word Dutch to refer to many regions around Germany, including the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, as Dutch.

These immigrants first arrived in the early 1700s and they brought all their Traditions with them. Although they were unable to celebrate their Easter and Christmas traditions exactly like they would have back home, they adapted to the new world. They had to change some of their traditional festive Foods and Made new music and poems that Incorporated their journey to the new world.

There are hundreds of different traditions around Europe and North America for Easter time. But the popularity of the Easter Bunny around the world is due to the exportation of soft culture from the United States. Because the United States exports all of its movies and television shows, through its media is how much of the world learns about US culture. So, when American movie or television studios develop TV shows with Easter episodes, those episodes are watched by people around the world. That is how Easter Bunny has found its way to Easter celebrations in China, Japan, Singapore, and other places that don't have Christianity as one of their main religions.

The exportation of US culture through media is also how Halloween came to be a fun holiday that's now celebrated around the world.

Many non-Americans know Halloween to be a US only holiday. But since people love dressing up, scaring others, and eating candy and getting drunk, it is no surprise the people started adopting Halloween in some regions of the world.

What about the surrounding areas around Germany? Did they also have Easter rabbits or hares?

No! The tradition of rabbits being associated with Easter is a German, Austrian, and Swiss tradition. Other parts of Europe had other animals that are special and associated with Easter.

For example, France did not have the Easter Bunny. Even now, if you go to France, it's going to have adopted the Easter bunny as part of their Easter celebrations. Instead of a child receiving a milk chocolate rabbit, they will receive a milk chocolate Bell.

If a family is in Russia and they are celebrating Easter, they will not buy chocolate rabbits either or buy rabbit decorations. But they can purchase egg shaped chocolates and candies.

Is there any Pagan connection to the Easter Bunny?

Yes, absolutely! There used to be thousands of pagan tribes throughout Europe before most of the continent was conquered. They were either conquered through the sword or through religious conversion. Just because a people become Christians does not mean that they completely abandon the pagan traditions and beliefs that they used to have. In many cases, Independence simply adopted their Pagan beliefs to their new Christianity religion.

One possible way the Easter Bunny and colored eggs became part of the Christian tradition was because a pagan people adopted their Springtime Festival of Eostre into the Christian holiday.

If you know anything about the history of Christianity, the Christian religion spread because the pope ordered missionaries to travel to the four corners of the Earth and preach the message of Jesus Christ and of the Christian God.

The Vatican would train missionaries to go out in two different cultures, Landscapes, and countries and convert anyone who was not Christian. They were allowed to convert tribes and peoples into Christianity using a variety of methods. Well, many people became Christians through blood in the store, other people became Christians through missionary work and adapting the local culture to Christian religious practices and mythology.

The adoption of the Pagan celebration of Eostre is one major way in which the Germanic people became Christian. As you can see, the adoption of the Pagan Springtime Festival has lasted to the modern day. The Pagan tradition has even influenced Christian practices around the world.

Around the year 600, Christian missionaries went out to the region of land we know as West Germany. With the aim of converting the Anglo-Saxon people. The Anglo Saxons worshiped a wide variety of gods, goddesses, and spirits.

Actually, many people in the region believe that every single object, animal, then Mark, and person had a spirit inside of them. They had many rituals so they could communicate with the spirits. One of the most important goddesses was the goddess Eostre.

Eostre was the goddess of Springtime. She was so important to the people of West German region that the entire month I was named after her and it was known as a Ēosturmōnaþ.

According to linguists, her name is a mix of the Proto Indo-European words meaning dawn or morning and to shine or to glow.

However, this springtime goddess is a spirit that did not have a special connection to rabbits. She was a lover of all animals, but there is no legend that ties Eostre to rabbits.

Why are Eggs important to Easter?

We all know that rabbits are mammals and mammals do not lay eggs. So why in the world is the Easter Bunny carrying around eggs? And why are they carrying eggs in a little basket? And why are the eggs made of chocolate? And why are the eggs different colors?

The combination of the Easter Bunny and eggs can also be found in German traditions, like the ones we mentioned above.

Did ancient pagans dye their eggs during Springtime celebrations? Yes

According to the website English heritage.com, eggs have been a major part of many celebrations pre-Christian the impose Christianity. In many parts of Europe including the UK, the eggs represent rebirth and a brand-new life full of potential possibilities. Eggs are often exchanged around the springtime among friends and family. Those who lived in villages would gather together and trade eggs with their neighbors.

After Catholicism took root in parts of Europe in the Middle Ages, many regions did not eat eggs during lent. When Lent finally ended on Easter Sunday, they would dine on eggs. This is how eggs came to be a part of Easter. The people would celebrate by eating eggs and this tradition came to mark the end of Lent and also the beginning of Spring.

If peasants and medieval workers lived on a Lord's land, they would give the Lord eggs as a token of thanks during Easter time.

Because Lent and Easter are two critical periods of holiness, a lot of superstitions developed around legs and Easter time. For example, the chicken laid an egg on Easter morning, then that egg would turn into a diamond if it was buried in the ground for a hundred years.

Many people would ask a member of the church to bless their eggs before they eat them on Easter morning so that they would have good fertility and be able to have a child that year

So how did the myth of both the Easter Bunny and colored eggs develop into the egg-carrying and bowtie wearing Bunny that we know now?

It is because both Rabbits and Eggs are both symbols of fertility and of rebirth and a new cycle of life. Just like back in ancient and medieval days, rabbits are known for their virility. Now, since we have modern technology, we can get rabbits neutered and spayed so they don't create new litters of bunnies every 6 months.

But imagine if we never spayed or neutered bunnies? There would be herds of bunnies everywhere. We would not be able to drive our cars because there would be so many bunnies on the street!

Eggs are now made of chocolate because chocolate is a very abundant food in our world now. Long ago, there was no way that medieval peasants and workers could get their hands on chocolate. Far too many ingredients come from different parts of the world. I doubt there was even a food that was similar to chocolate.

Since people used to eat eggs on Easter day, we simply switched out the hard-boiled eggs for plastic eggs filled with chocolate. I don't know anyone who wants to eat three or four hard boiled eggs on Easter morning, even if they were dyed purple and pink.

So did ancient and medieval peoples dye their eggs as well or is that a modern trend?! They actually did dye their eggs with homemade dyes. Homemade dyes were made from plants like flower petals.

While many people believe that the traditions of Easter were invented to sell candy and chocolate, as you can see, there are ancient rituals and traditions that have stood the test of time. And the great thing about Easter in the modern era is that there is a Christian Easter and a secular Easter.

People do not have to celebrate Easter. I'll be Christians if they do not want to. They also do not have to participate in Lent and stop eating eggs. They also do not have to have a child in order to make their marriage valid in the eyes of God and the church.

If an atheist or someone from another religion wants to, they can celebrate easter or simply dine on chocolate. Or they can dress up as the easter bunny if they want!