SIGNIFICANCE OF EASTER...

 ...And story behind the pagan rabbit

Taken together, the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ form the central events of the Christian faith. It is not too far-fetched to say that without the resurrection there is no Christianity.

As with all things human, there were debates about the best way and the best time to celebrate Easter. Some wanted to continue to associate it with the Jewish Passover on Nisan 14 of the Hebrew calendar. But that date could fall on any day of the week, whereas Jesus’ resurrection took place on Sunday. As such, Western Christians decided to make sure that the holiday occurred on a Sunday.

Christian church leaders came up with a specific formula: Easter was to be observed on the first Sunday following the full moon after the vernal equinox—that is, the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere. Consequently, Easter in the West can be as early as March 22 or as late as April 25.

The significance of Easter in the Christian calendar grew with the addition of other days of great importance. Good Friday marks the day Jesus was crucified. Holy Week commemorates the events in Jesus’ life leading up to his crucifixion and resurrection. The season of Lent establishes a 40-day preparation period of prayer, fasting, and reflection prior to the Easter celebration. Because of Easter, Christians believe that death is not the final word. Ultimately, all who place their trust in Jesus will one day break the shackles of death and live again in glory.

So if Easter is a celebration of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead and its significance, how did the Easter bunny become associated with it? The answer to that question is the reason for pursuing the subject on Wrights Lane.

In order to understand how and why the rabbit became associated with Easter we have to go back to ancient Mesopotamia and Syria. Three thousand years ago, the hare symbolized death and rebirth to these ancient people. Over time the associations made with hares shifted to rabbits because they have many of the same characteristics.

This association with death and rebirth may be why rabbits were depicted on gravestones in the Greco-Roman world. Early Christians appropriated the rabbit as a symbol on their gravestones as well. As you can see, there has been a longstanding connection of hares and rabbits with death and rebirth—or in the Christian sense, resurrection.

Moreover, in the Greco-Roman world, rabbits were also associated with lust and sexual excess. This idea has endured -- something we can see in Hugh Hefner calling his playmates “bunnies.” A connection between rabbits and sex was obvious, given how often rabbits were caught engaging in sexual activity and giving birth. Even today, we’ve likely all heard the phrase “breed like rabbits.”

In the ancient world, rabbits were said to serve various gods of love, life, death, and immortality. During the Renaissance (a period that harkened back to the classical world), art featuring frolicking rabbits suggested unfettered sexual pleasure. Given this association and the arrival of spring in the Northern Hemisphere—which signaled the rebirth of the earth after winter—hares and rabbits became symbols of fertility in pre-Christian Europe.

Hence, the direct link between Easter and rabbits was forged sometime in sixteenth- or seventeenth-century Europe.

Some trace the word “Easter” to the German fertility goddess Eostra, who in some traditions was even associated with hares. However, more and more scholars think it may have come from a Norse word for “spring,” which in the Germanized form is ostern.

In all likelihood, the name of the goddess was also derived from the local word for spring, but it is impossible to say which came first. What is clear is that various symbols for fertility -- eggs, rabbits, and lilies -- that were already fixed in culture all became firmly attached to the Christian holiday known in Western Europe and North America as Easter.

In the last two hundred years, the Christian holy-day has become more and more of a secular folk holiday. By the 1890s, the pagan and folk aspects of Easter as a celebration of spring were fully established and commercially exploited in America.

New clothes, parades, candy, and egg hunts have become key cultural expressions, even though the number of people celebrating the religious significance of the holiday declined in the last half of the twentieth century.

In the end, the Easter bunny has nothing to do with Jesus directly. There is nothing in the Bible or Christian tradition that links the two together. Yet still, the “pagan” associations of the hare and rabbit with fertility, life, death, and rebirth remained near enough to the cultural surface to find expression alongside the powerful religious claim that Jesus had conquered death.

If art, legends, and myths from the past teach us anything, it is that human beings long to live, to love and be loved, to reproduce, and to live beyond death. The resurrection of Jesus, the central element of Easter, reflects those longings and affirms a dramatic claim: one day death will be swallowed up in victory.