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The
pagan origins of the Easter Bunny
Have
you ever wondered where the celebration of the Christian holiday celebrating
the resurrection of Christ acquired its unusual name and odd symbols
of colored eggs and rabbits?
The answer
lies in the ingenious way that the Christian church absorbed Pagan practices.
After discovering that people were more reluctant to give up their holidays
and festivals than their gods, they simply incorporated Pagan practices
into Christian festivals. As recounted by the Venerable Bede, an early
Christian writer, clever clerics copied Pagan practices and by doing
so, made Christianity more palatable to pagan folk reluctant to give
up their festivals for somber Christian practices.
In second
century Europe, the predominate spring festival was a raucous Saxon
fertility celebration in honor of the Saxon Goddess Eastre, whose sacred
animal was a hare. The hare is often associated with moon goddesses;
the egg and the haer together represent the god and the goddess, respectively.
Pagan fertility
festivals at the time of the Spring equinox were common- it was believed
that at this time, male and female energies were balanced.
The colored
eggs are of another, even more ancient origin. The eggs associated with
this and other Vernal festivals have been symbols of rebirth and fertility
for so long the precise roots of the tradition are unknown, and may
date to the beginning of human civilization. Ancient Romans and Greeks
used eggs as symbols of fertility, rebirth, and abundance- eggs were
solar
symbols, and figured in the festivals of numerous resurrected
gods.
Moving forward fifteen
hundred years, we find ourselves in Germany, where children await the
arrival of Oschter Haws, a rabbit who will lay colored eggs in nests
to the delight of children. It was this German tradition that popularized
the 'Easter bunny' in America, when introduced into the American cultural
fabric by German settlers in Pennsylvania.
Many modern
practitioners of Neo-pagan and earth-based religions have embraced these
symbols as part of their religious practice, identifying with the life-affirming
aspects of the spring holiday. (The Neopagan holiday of Ostara is descended
from the Saxon festival.) Ironically, some Christian groups have used
the presence of these symbols to denounce the celebration of the Easter
holiday, and many churches have recently abandoned the Pagan moniker
with more Christian oriented titles like 'Resurrection Sunday.'
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