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What are the origins of the Easter bunny?

Why is Easter associated with bunnies and eggs?

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    has it mostly down, with a few side-notes worth providing (as always when it comes to mythology, three scholars have five different incontrovertible proofs that something was one way or another. I am going with the stories I heard as a kid). Germanic mythology knew of "Frau Holle" or "Frouw Houlda", an elderly matron who led a decidedly schizophrenic life. In one of her incarnations she was Mother Winter and Mother Spring, shaking her bedsheets to make it snow and singing to the wind to make it bloom, in another she was the ferocious leader of the Wild Hunt (or one of its many versions), driving a range of wild boars through towns and villages, ready to trample anyone who dared to step in her way. Houlda also was the patron of all womanfolk and their protector. Abusive husbands had nothing less to fear than eternal torment by her hands, personally, and the removal of their testes daily for feeding to the wild boars. The Germanic alpine landscape knows many of those stories, but this one fused with two others - the story of the Perchta, mischievous female mountain trolls, also leaders of another version of the Wild Hunt and known to other areas as the "Norns", and the story of Rupert who'd become, much later, St. Nick's evil companion and punisher and the blueprint for a very good man, St. Hubertus, who is said to be blowing his horn in cold winter nights to warn travelers and townsfolk of the passing Wild Hunt (a third version, this time led by Wodan the Father or the Erlking, depending on which part of the Black Forest you ask). All these conjoined with yet another festival, Ostara's. Also known later (as Jane correctly points out) as Eostre, Ostara was likely a blueprint for Frouw Houlda throughout the Germanic tribal regions. Ostara was just as two-faced as Houlda, bringing fertility and spring, protecting anyone born in the still cold days after winter (children born in Winter are generally thought to be under the protection of Wodan or his proto-equivalences), and destroying whole landscapes under her heel when angered. Here's an image of her in the "Cloaked Avenger" pose: To celebrate her emergence in the early spring days, a three-fold ritual was performed and persists to this day, 1300 years later. First, the mean spirits and evils of Winter were driven from a town. To do so, townsfolk dressed in fur and wearing masks to look like the Perchta, spent a whole day banging drums and anything, really, that made noise. Those "Perchtenlaeufe", Perchta runs, are known, today, as Carnival, Fasching, Fasnacht, and other words, around the world. Following the run, all children born during Ostara's last reigns, until about the age of 15, celebrated their birthdays for one month flat, receiving presents and being the VIPs at almost nightly feasts. At the end of this, these children decorated the well and baking stone of the town. The festival at the end of the decoration runs was known as Ostara's Feast. Here are some of those decorations which, as well, survived the past millennium and are still practiced. Those are from my hometown of Bamberg, Germany, and surrounding areas: Note how Christianity essentially absorbed Germanic traditions (as it did with Christmas and the take-over of the tree as its symbol). The second picture is of a fake well situated next to a church instead of the real well in the town's center. During Ostara's Feast, which lasted three days and two nights (conveniently they morphed into Green Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Saturday) eggs were given to Ostara as both a symbol of fertility and to, kid you not, represent the testes of men - a neat trick to con her into thinking the guys were already newts and didn't need to be snipped in punishment. Hares, also a sign of fertility (if you never saw them do.... errm, yeah), were skinned and their meat used for a dish called "Ostera's Stew", which you can still get as "Ostereintopf" in most Bavarian towns during that day. The pelts were stretched and hanged to dry for next year's Perchta costumes. Note also, that "Green Thursday" comes from the Germanic "Grein", which means "Crying" or "Begging" for it was the day during which one mourned the dead of Winter and ask Donar (Thor, etc.) for mercy for one's crops. And that is, if you ask my townspeople, why there's eggs and hares on Easter.

Jonas Mikka Luster at Quora Visit the source

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Easter is a tradition which goes very far back. It goes from today's church and secular traditions to the traditions of the first Christions and back to Judaism. It also goes back to Scandanavian pagan festivals and Middle-Eastern traditions. But the Easter we celebrate today comes from northern European Germanic traditions which mixed with Christianity when the Romans brought the Christian faith to the European continent and the eventually the British Isles and the Americas.Ä’ostre is a Germanic divinity who, is the namesake of the festival of Easter. She  is known as the goddess of the pagan equinox and also the Teutonic goddess of Spring. It has been suggested that her lights, as goddess of the dawn and the equinox, were carried by rabbits. Eostre represents spring fertility and fecundity. Ä’ostre is linked very closely to fertility that the name is the root of the word estrogen, the female sex hormone.Spring is seen as a time of rebirth which is evident with the blossoming of trees and flowers. The rabbit, which has links to Ä’ostre has become associated with fertility as the rabbit is known as a prolific breeder which gives birth to large litters in early spring.Fecundity (to which Eostre is known to represent) is the actual reproductive rate of an organism, in this case the reproductive rate of a person and is measured by the number of eggs. So, with the rabbit being known to reproduce in epic proportions and Ä’ostre is synonymous with eggs, the link to rabbits and eggs during Easter probably originated here.  Nobody knows for certain where the Easter celebrations originated from, most likely the Easter celebrations started as a celebration of the spring  equinox. When Rome made Christianity its official state religion, it spread as quickly as the Romans conquered lands to the west and throughout modern-day Europe. As the Romans conquered lands, Christianity became the official religion of the newly conquered territories. It was only natural to make the acceptance of a new religion an easier process by letting the new recipients of Christianity include bits and pieces of its culture and former pagan festivals. This was to ensure an easier transition.

James Baxley

Because Easter is really a descendant of a spring pagan holiday honoring this deity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%92ostre Hares were said to carry the light of Eostre, the dawn goddess, but there doesn't seem to be a conclusive reason as to why hares were associated with her. According to this link, people also used to think hares laid eggs. That may explain the association of eggs with Easter, or perhaps eggs were also a natural symbol of rebirth. http://www.spiritofold.co.uk/magick/wheel/eostre.htm

Jane Huang

They are symbols appropriated from pagan celebrations, dating as far back as 2000 BC, but more recently associated with the goddess Ostara/Eostre. http://rcg.org/books/ttooe.html Some of the issue may be due to a gross mistranslation of Acts 12:4, which seems to be unique to the King James versions. Maybe a genuine error, but possibly a deliberate mistake. http://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Acts%2012:4

Brian Greenhow

People are going to dig up old pagan celebrations or other plausible-sounding explanations in the distant past, but I have a more immediate one: The United States, from the twenties and on, was an at the time uniquely affluent and pluralistic society. Consumerism was becoming a thing, and merchants wanted to sell their goods. Festivals and seasonal celebrations have always been of supreme importance to many shop-owners (to this day there are many businesses that are unprofitable for eleven months a year). But the problem in the pluralistic US was that everyone didn't hold the same celebrations, or when they did, they didn't put the same meaning into them. So they looked for ways to use the business opportunity of a seasonal celebration, without aligning too much with any particular culture, religion or faction's interpretation of it. Thus we got Santa Claus, in his modern Coca-Cola-shaped incarnation. Thus, a good deal later, we got Halloween as it is today. And wherever the easter bunny and painted eggs originally came from, I bet the real reason you've heard of it (wherever you are) is the mercantile need to find neutral and inoffensive symbols and markers of celebration. It's not conspiracy, just something emergent from the self-interest of marketers.

Harald Korneliussen

Because Easter, like Passover and other holidays that take place at this time of year, is in origin a co-opted spring fertility festival at the time of the vernal equinox. The English word refers to a goddess https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%84%C2%92ostre . Interesting coincidence that a celebration supposedly about rising from the dead occurs at a time of budding, flowers opening, and birth. Eggs and rabbits are symbols of fertility.Christmas/Hanukkah are co-opted winter solstice festivals: early Roman Christians co-opted Roman Saturnalia. and Halloween/Thanksgiving/Sukkot are obviously related to the autumnal equinox. 

Jeffrey Schweitzer

You didn't even mention the fact that the Day of Resurrection is referred to using the name of the Saxon fertility goddess whose fertility symbols of the prolific rabbit and egg were baptized in the Celtic Christian church as symbols of New Life...  easier to co-opt the symbols than to try and erase them.

Ken Jacobsen

How did the "Easter Bunny and its egg" become associated with Easter?The name "Easter" comes from the deity Eostra, an ancient goddess of spring and fertility. Legend states that a little girl found a wounded bird and prayed to Eostra for help. Eostra appeared and crossed a rainbow bridge, then turned the bird into a hare. Eostra told the little girl that the hare would come back once a year to produce rainbow coloured eggs. And so it goes.In a short summary: Pagan beliefs celebrated Eostre and dedicated an entire festival towards it  ("Eostre Festival"). This revolved around the same date as when Christians celebrated the resurrection of Jesus. Naturally, Christianity took pages from the pagan faith and created one day for celebration. The Easter Bunny tradition first truly began in 1680s in Germany when an article on the pagan Easter bunny was published. This bunny was named "Oschter Haws". This article was of Oschter Haws laying eggs in a garden. Children then began to build nests out of whatever scraps they could find, such as hats or bonnets, and place them outside. On Easter morning they would be filled with rainbow coloured eggs. Pennsylvania Dutch settlers who moved to America in the 1700s brought these beliefs with them. In the 1800s Germany began creating the iconic "Easter Bunny" candies to begin turning a profit from Easter. They were produced from pastry and sugar. Soon chocolate ones were made as well. This was eventually adopted in North America in the 1870s. As Christianity has such a large following, it is no wonder why it is celebrated "en masse."

Caleb Thompson

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