A question asked by a million others?

Question

Alright people I don't want random answers or atheist bs just a simple where from a why....Why is a bunny hiding candy associated with Easter?

Answer 1

For reasons having nothing to do with Christ. Because Easter is a holiday with pagan origins, celebrating a fertility goddess, and rabbits, eggs, chicks, etc, are all pagan fertility symbols. The candy came in just because we like candy. Celebrating the resurrection of Christ is a thing that we should all do every day. The early church "christianized" pagan holidays such as Yule (Christmas), Samhain (All Hallows Eve), and the festival of the goddess Eostre (Easter). But pagan holdovers remain with all these holidays. It doesn't diminish the importance of the Christian aspect of the holiday, only that the times for the Christian celebrations were chosen to coincide with the times of the pagan holidays. This was done so that pagan people could accept Christ without having to give up their own native traditions.

Answer 2

To pagans the "Easter hare" was no ordinary animal, but a companion of the goddess of spring, Eostre. The Hare and the Rabbit were the most fertile animals known and they served as symbols of the new life during the Spring season. Parents told their children that the magic hare would bring them presents at the spring festival. The presents were often painted eggs, as these represented the new life starting at this time of year. In most places, the Easter rabbit (bunny) has replaced the Easter hare completely

Answer 3

Same reason there's a Santa. It's a child's fantasy, pertaining the comimg of spring. Nothing to do with Easter. People only combined the two. Probably a mistake, but so commonplace now that almost everyone does it.
See what happens when stories are handed down from generation to generation? Things get out of proportion.
Doesn't it make you wonder how true some stories are that are written in a large book that you read?

Answer 4

Atheist bs ? Rabbits are a fertility symbol, they breed rapidly, and provide an example of fecundity. Fertility and renewal, are the Pagan roots of the meaning of Easter. Likewise eggs are an example of new life about to appear, and also symbolise re-birth and renewal during Spring, when new life returns to the Earth. The Christian adoption and absorption of this Pagan festival is well documented and similarities are obvious.

Answer 5

The rabbit is a symbol of fertility.
The egg ... the same.
The tradition comes from what we might loosely term paganism and was, as is Easter as a whole, borrowed from those times and appropriate for this time of the year.
The actual dates of Easter have NOTHING to do with jesus, much as December 25 has NOTHING to do with the same guy.
I thought that all this was common knowledge but, when I ask local religious folk what they are celebrating in late December, they inevitably reply, "Jesus' birthday". How stunningly ignorant these people are!!

Anyway, for a more 'cultured' response, see 'newdude'. Well done there!

Answer 6

The answer lies in the 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.

Answer 7

The lunar Goddess Eostre. Her chief symbols were the rabbit (for fertility, and her worshipers often saw the image of a rabbit in the full moon), and the egg (representing the cosmic egg of creation). This is where the customs of "Easter Eggs" and the "Easter Bunny" originated.

And so we get into the complicated pagan traditions of celebrating the Vernal Equinox, mixed with the complicated tradition of hunting for eggs and rabbits, mixed with the Christian church coming in and appropriating pagan holiday festivals and adapting them to the Christian religious celebration calendar, and you end up with Easter.

Answer 8

Eggs,not simple candy.

It is the spring fertility rites.
Bunnies, eggs, Chicks, and almost any of the first things of spring.
Note also the selective use of the first appearing flowers like Crocus and Daffodils as well as Lillies.
All first bloomers. The spring flowers

It is all about spring fertility rituals.
Since I live at about the 55th parralel most of them don't appear until later in May, although the geese are already headed north.

Answer 9

Decorated Easter eggs are much older than Easter, and both eggs and rabbits are age-old fertility symbols. The Passover Seder service uses a hard-cooked egg flavored with salt water as a symbol both of new life and the Temple service in Jerusalem. The Jewish tradition may have come from earlier Roman Spring feasts. The ancient Persians also painted eggs for Nowrooz, their New Year celebration falling on the Spring Equinox. This tradition has continued every year on Nowrooz since ancient times.

Easter egg origin stories abound—one has an emperor claiming that the Resurrection was as likely as eggs turning red (see Mary Magdalene); more prosaically the Easter egg tradition may have celebrated the end of the privations of Lent. In the West, eggs were forbidden during Lent as well as other traditional fast days. Likewise, in Eastern Christianity, both meat and dairy are prohibited during the fast, and eggs are seen as "dairy" (a foodstuff that could be taken from an animal without shedding its blood).

Another Orthodox tradition is the presenting of red colored eggs to friends while giving Easter greetings. This custom had its beginning with Mary Magdalene. After the Ascension of Christ, she supposedly went to the Emperor of Rome and greeted him with "Christ is risen", as she gave him a red egg. She then began preaching Christianity to him. The egg is symbolic of the grave and life renewed by breaking out of it. The red symbolizes the blood of Christ redeeming the world, represented by the egg, and our regeneration through the bloodshed for us by Christ. The egg itself is a symbol of the Resurrection while being dormant it contains a new life sealed within it.
One would have been forced to hard boil the eggs that the chickens produced so as not to waste food, and for this reason the Spanish dish hornazo (traditionally eaten on and around Easter) contains hard-boiled eggs as a primary ingredient.

In the North of England, at Eastertime, a traditional game is played where hard boiled pace eggs are distributed and each player hits the other players egg with their own. This is known as "egg dumping" or "egg jarping". The winner is the holder of the last intact egg. The losers get to eat their eggs. It is also practiced in Bulgaria, Croatia, Serbia, the Republic of Srpska and other countries. They call it tucanje.

In Germany children throw their colored and hard boiled Easter eggs as far as they can across meadows. Amazingly, the eggs break only when hitting a small rock or other hard object hidden in the short grass of early spring, This game seems similar to the egg rolling referred to above, and the winner is the one whose egg or eggs do not break.

I don't want any monotheistic bs. Jerk.

Answer 10

Eggs represent fertility so do Bunny's in spring where mating is dominate we celebrate Easter taken from the pagan holiday which respects nature... Hallmark made the bunny hide the egg