What does a bunny and eggs have to do with Easter?

Question

Where in history did these come together and why?

Answer 1

Easter is the celebration of the Resurrection of Christ. It is celebrated just before the end of Passover. Christ's resurrection occurred just after the end of Passover. The "Last Supper" was the Feast of the Passover.

The bunny and the eggs are Pegan symbols of fertility. Constantine, who happened to be Pegan, was the Roman Emperor who combined many Pegan and Christian celebrations. The Pegan celebration is the Spring Equinox which is right about the same time as Passover, which as explained above is when the Resurrection of Christ occurred.

Answer 2

Easter is not a Christian celebration. It is a pagan celebration for fertility and the coming of spring. The rabbit and the egg represent fertility.
An egg has been used has a symbol of fertility for thousands of years.
I believe the word Easter comes from the name of the Babylonian fertility goddess Ishtar...Not sure on that one...but I could have sworn I had read that some where.
Jesus died on Nisan 14th on the Jewish Calender which corresponds to the 4th full moon of the year. Easter normally falls a week or two before or after that.
A lot of Christian celebrations and ways of worship and even belief systems have their roots in pagan origin. The most famous Christian symbol...the cross...is of pagan origin. The worship of a cross goes back thousands of years. A cross is a representation of light or the sun.
The believe in an immortal soul is also a pagan belief which pre-dates Christianity.
The list is endless, so it is not surprising that a so called Christian celebration is in fact pagan in origin.

Answer 3

The word Easter is a derivative of Eostre - the Goddess of Spring. The animal associated with her was the Hare - but it was debased into the Easter Bunny when the Christian church realigned their resurrection with the Vernal Equinox to coax Pagans to worship Christ. The egg is a more obvious symbol of new life.

Answer 4

Although Easter is supposed to commemorate the resurrection of Christ from the dead, it originally was a pagan celebration originating with the Celts celebrating the goddess of fertility (the name Easter is derived from the name of the goddess). It was adopted by the Catholic Church in it's attempt to lure pagan worshipers into Christianity by supposedly easing them into it. They could continue to celebrate their former holidays which the church now deemed would commemorate the resurrection of the Christ. Both the bunny and the egg are fertility symbols which derive from the original Celtic holiday.

Answer 5

What I believe is the bunny would symbolize the gentleness of Jesus Christ and the eggs are a sign of rebirth. To go even further maybe we color eggs due to celebration of being given a new life through Christ.

Answer 6

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 (Ostara), whose sacred animal was a hare.

The colored eggs associated with the bunny 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.

Pagan fertility festivals at the time of the Spring equinox were common- it was believed that at this time, when day and night were of equal length, male and female energies were also in balance. The hare is often associated with moon goddesses; the egg and the hare together represent the god and the goddess, respectively.

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 who discover them Easter morning. 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.'

Answer 7

What does Easter really have to do with the Resurrection of Christ hahahha... it's of course a pagan god none the less... the bunny and egg thing is still quiet a mystery to me too :D

Answer 8

Actually these things are more of symbolic. Sice it is Easter, we celebrate Jesus' ressurection, so the eggs symbolizes life or should we say, new life, and the bunny symbolizes spring, the sign of a new year so there what they symbolize for

Answer 9

easter was originally a pagan fertility festival, hence eggs and rabbits (what reproduces more efficiently than rabbits?)

Answer 10

a long time ago it started during pagan celebrations...now just tradition and fun for decorations..