Easter Bunny History
Many people consider Easter to be an important religious event. As for others, they mark the coming of spring and nice changes in nature. To others, it’s both. And children are happy as the time of chocolate Easter bunny present, painted eggs and other wonderful things is approaching.
Everybody is aware that the Easter is a mixture of a great number of various customs from different civilizations. And surely the Easter Bunny is the most remarkable thing of the solemnity, and there are very interesting ancestors of it.
Eggs as well as rabbits (or hares) have been fecundity symbols from the oldest times. These animals are known to have always a big offspring, that’s why it’s no surprise they signify fecundity and renewal of nature after a severe season.
Newcomers to the U.S.A. from Germany didn’t forget there motherland customs and continued to follow their traditions (for instance, the Christmas tree). “Pennsylvania Dutch” mothers and fathers would tell their kids stories of the Osterhase or “Easter hare”.
Like Sinterklaas at Christmas, the Osterhase comes at night and brings Easter presents (painted eggs too) for good children. And children , in their turn, don’t forget to propose some carrots to the Easter Hare, as they remember about Santa on Christmas Eve, leaving him milk and candies.
Despite the Easter Bunny is so soft and nice, it causes ardent polemics in many countries, including the U.S. In this state some people organize into societies with the clear purpose to make a boundary between religion and temporal life and to distribute the holiday among non-Christians suggested to call it the “Spring Bunny”.
But there are some Christians who renounce Easter on the basis that this event has the pagan origin. The newcomers brought with them some rabbits to Australia, their posterity was enormous, the animals nearly overfilled the country. Australians have been attempting to use some local animal instead of the Easter Bunny and called it Bilby. If you visit the Land Down Under on Easter (but it will during the our autumn) you will find out that there is a chocolate bilby in kids’ Easter baskets.
And there is one more tale which connects the Easte Bunny with the old pagan legend. The legend tells that the goddess Eostre (it is thought, the name is the origin for “Easter”) walked in the winter wood and there was a wounded bird. She wanted it to go through the severe weather and converted it into rabbit, but metamorphosis was not finished, as the rabbit went on to lay eggs.
The rabbit wished to be thankful, so it beautified his eggs and gifted them to Eostre every spring. It is strange enough, but nobody had heard this story before 1990, so we can’t be sure it is the basis of the custom. None the less Easter keeps on being a merry holiday for babies and teenagers in spring.