Silly rabbit, Easter is for Jesus.
How did a rabbit hop its way into Easter celebrations with its basket of eggs?
The idea of a rabbit passing out eggs at Easter time is a mixture of Christian traditions and beliefs, pagan rituals, and a little European folklore all together.
Even the holiday’s name, Easter, originates from a pagan belief system.
According to an article by Virginia Tech, everything started when early Christians decided to merge their religious beliefs involving the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ with the pagan celebrations of the goddess Eostre. The name Easter was formed from that.
It is thanks to that particular celebration that a rabbit first became associated with the holiday. The pagan goddess Eostre was associated with spring and fertility. Since rabbits are well known for being fertile and constantly reproducing during the springtime, some associated them as a sacred animal for her.
That still leaves the question of how colorful eggs come into play. The article also addresses how dying and hiding eggs originated as well.
According to the article, eggs symbolized new life and fertility for ancient Romans. During the springtime, ancient Romans would color eggs using vegetable dye and give them to neighbors, friends, and loved ones as a gift to represent new beginnings.
Later on, the early Christians continued to think of eggs as a symbol of fertility and abundance, and they would not eat any eggs during Lent as part of their fasting. Instead, they would preserve and dye the eggs special colors so that they could tell the difference between the preserved eggs and fresh eggs. When the fast they were on for Lent ended on Easter, they would eat the colorful eggs first. Of course, early Christians also came up with another way to have eggs symbolize their own beliefs by claiming that eggs also represented the resurrection. Some sources say that hiding the eggs and searching for them are supposed to represent the women searching for Jesus at the tomb on resurrection day.
While it is clear what the rabbit and eggs are supposed to represent, the only question is how in the world it ended up having a bunny passing out eggs.
According to the Virginia Tech article, that is actually thanks to some 19th century folklore in Germany and Britain. According to folklore, there is a myth that has Eostre change a hare into a bird. People took that to develop the idea of a rabbit handing out eggs each Easter.
