Anyone know how the Easter Bunny and decorating eggs ties into Easter?

(I know, my eggs were a little pathetic this year in the area of creativity. A bit last minute with all the hype)


Ever since I was a kid I have enjoyed decorating eggs every year for Easter. Even as an adult, I still like to decorate eggs! Easter candy is my favorite holiday candy, especially the Cadbury eggs;) I still look forward to getting a chocolate Easter bunny every year from my mom. This year while I was coloring my eggs and indulging in my candy, I thought about this trivial tradition…..eggs….a bunny….and Easter…how do they all fit together? I know the Christian meaning of Easter, but how does the bunny and eggs fit in?

Have you ever thought about how the Easter bunny ties into Easter? After all, why is a life-size bunny hopping around delivering eggs?

Christians observe Easter as the celebration of Christ’s rising, but the holiday traditions can be traced to legends and customs of pagan origins that have been passed down for centuries.

Even before the egg became a Christian Easter symbol it was a rite of spring festivals. Pagan’s saw the egg as a sign of rebirth of the earth. In Christianity, the egg symbolizes the rebirth of man. The decorating of eggs dates back to the middle ages in England. The egg is a sign of new life, just like a chick hatches from an egg. In the Medevil Europe, eggs were forbidden during Lent. During the strict Lenten, no eggs were consumed for forty six days. During Easter, the consumption of eating eggs resumed. In celebration, the eggs were often decorated.

The Easter bunny and tradition of decorating eggs are not a recent invention. The bunny dates back to the pagan festival. The goddess, Eostre, was worshiped by the Anglo-Saxons through her earthly symbol, the rabbit. During the springtime, this goddess was worshiped in hope of sunshine and new birth. Originally, the bunny was a symbol of fertility.

The next historical entry under the bunny & egg is found fifteen hundred years later in Germany. There, children would eagerly await the arrival of the Oschter Haws, a rabbit who delighted children on Easter morning by laying colored eggs in nests. This was also the first known time that the rabbit and egg were iconoclastically linked together.

The Germans are credited with bringing the Easter bunny to America. Christians did not acknowledge this tradition till shortly after the Civil War which is also around the same time Easter became widely celebrated in the US. For the last 200 years, the Easter Bunny has become the most commercially acknowledged symbol of Easter.

So there you go….a glimpse of Easter traditions and how the Easter bunny and decorating eggs fits into Easter!

Happy Easter!