Easter is the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus, which is the apotheosis of the Christian religion; yet one of the symbols of the holiday – the Easter bunny, stems from Pagan believes and traditions.
The origin of the Easter bunny can be traced back to the 13th century, to pre-Christian Germany where among many other gods, people worshipped the goddess of spring Eaosta and honoured her and the coming spring with feast held on the Vernal Equinox. Naturally, Eaosta was, as well, the goddess of fertility and had a hare as her companion.
When during the 15th century, Roman Catholicism became the dominant religion in Germany, the new beliefs merged with the existing pagan traditions to give birth to the Osterhase (from German, “Easter hare”) and later to the Easter eggs, which were to represent Jesus’ resurrection.
The first Easter hare legend was documented in Europe in the 1500s and the first written record of Easter eggs – in 1572, describing a punishment administered to a Catholic priest, tied to a cross for an hour while been served Easter eggs.
The first story about a rabbit hiding eggs in a garden was published in the 1680s. And in the next decades the German immigrants, who settled in the United States, helped the Easter hare to hop across the Atlantic and later to became one of the icons of the E
aster holiday.
The children of the German immigrants would create nests so the Easter hare could “lay” its colourful eggs. With time the nests evolved into baskets and sweets were placed in them. (The term Easter basket firstly appeared in print in 1881.)
The term Easter hare was firstly recorded in print in the English language in only 1851, in the weekly journal Household Words: “Many, also, were the sugar hares, Easter hares—those fabulous creatures so dear to German children.”
In the following years the term was blended and Americanised and the Easter bunny came to the scene, as the first written record, coming from 1900, confirms: The Frederick News: “The origin of the American Easter bunny or rabbit was the European hare.”
The chocolate Easter bunny, along with the tradition to hide treats for kids to find, had, of course, also originated in Germany, in the mid 19th century.
Yet the first Easter bunny marketing approach came in 1890, when Robert Strohecker became the first American shop owner to use a five-foot-tall chocolate bunny as an Easter promotion in his drug store.
By the beginning of the 19th century, chocolate Easter bunnies became a normal addition to the Easter treats for most American children, as an Ohio magazine reports in 1902: “Ornamented with exquisite pink baskets, filled with ices, and on the decorated..plates, chocolate bunnies, and angel food cake.”
During the WWII, the reasoning that cocoa rations should be saved for “staple civilian and military purposes, such as breakfast cocoa and candy bars” led to the mass production of hollow chocolate bunnies. (An American newspaper advertisement from the 1939 mentions “hollow chocolate rabbits” sold for five cents each.)
Yet the hollow bunnies turned out to be practical and easier to bite on, and here we are today, when aside from Halloween, Easter is the best candy-selling holiday and Easter bunnies are going places.
