Easter Bunny A Pagan Plant?

As a child, religion was confusing to me. This is not to say that I am crystal clear in my Christian walk now: I am just smart enough to look pensive rather than confused.

Holidays, and Easter in particular, were the greatest sources of confusion in my youth. How we got from the Resurrection to the Easter Bunny was a mystery to me. And unlike the major holidays such as Christmas, the 4th of July and my birthday, Easter moved around on the calendar from year to year. Sometimes it was in March; sometimes in April. What’s up with that?

Since Easter would mark the kickoff of spring break from school, no sadder words could be spoken by my mother than, “Easter comes late this year.”

As a child, and a budding conspiracy theorist, I just knew that teachers and calendar companies had conspired to torture children. It was much later that I learned that the teachers took the late arrival of spring vacation much harder than the students.

And what was with the Easter egg and the bunny?  With chicks – even the marshmallow ones – I could understand the connection to the egg. But bunnies? I didn't get it. And what did they have to do with Jesus and the Resurrection?

Apparently it all goes back to the ancient Saxons. Their pagan worship centered on the Spring equinox and the goddess Eastre (hence, Easter). Around the second century, Christians attempted to convert the Saxons. In a bold marketing move, the Christians came up with the idea of celebrating their holy of holies at the same time as the pagan festivities. So the Christians looked like regular guys while trying to save pagan souls.

Perhaps the early pagans were not the best when it came to understanding animal husbandry, which might explain the bunny-egg thing. Even as an adult that one’s a mystery to me. And I’m sure you can understand how this might prove confusing to a child. Nevertheless, since the custom resulted in a candy orgy second only to Halloween, I didn’t ask questions. I just went along.

Maybe the colored-egg/chocolate-bunny rituals evolved from the Christians’ subsequent attempt to take back their holiest holiday from the pagans? By the later half of the second century the Christian marketing team had grown into the ancient equivalent of today’s William Morris Agency. Perhaps they came up with a strategy to subsume the pagan rituals by destroying their symbols. But how? Burn them? Ban them? Nah. I'm guessing that when the pagans weren’t looking the Christians dipped the egg-laying bunny in chocolate, hard-boiled its eggs and ate the whole mess!

But that’s just my theory. So I really don’t know what to tell my grandkids when next month they will undoubtedly ask me again why the Easter Bunny brings us candy and we color eggs to celebrate Jesus’ Resurrection.

I could do some more research and consult with some of the pagan sects still practicing today. They can frequently be found on Sunday mornings teeing off or preparing burnt offerings on a tailgate alter to the gods of professional football or NASCAR.

Maybe on April 12 this year, I’ll find some, dutifully grilling bunnies or boiling eggs, and I can ask them about the origins of their rituals.

J. Rick Brown is a recovering lawyer who has gotten some of his biggest laughs from judges and juries. A product of a mixed marriage – his father was a Methodist and his mother a Baptist – Brown lives in Cary, NC, where he assists his wife teaching first-grade Sunday school. (She teaches and he is the bouncer.) They have three children over the age of 21 – though he avoids the oxymoron “adult children” – and four grandchildren at last count.