The Surprisingly Controversial Origins of the Easter Bunny

We’re all familiar with the legend of the Easter Bunny—the magical lagomorph who delivers colorful chocolate eggs to children as a holiday treat. These days, we tend to think of the Easter Bunny as a rabbit, but the first written reference to the legend actually features a hare. In his 1682 essay “De Ovis Paschalibus” (“Concerning Easter Eggs”) Georg Franck von Franckenau describes German children searching for eggs supposedly laid by a hare—a ritual we would now readily identify as an Easter Egg Hunt.

There are other European Easter traditions involving hares, including eating their meat and hunting them. One report from England in 1620 describes a reward of “a calf’s head and a hundred of eggs for their breakfast, and a groat in money” for any young men of the parish who could catch a hare and present it to the parson by 1 p.m. on Easter Monday. Clearly,  then, the involvement of hares in the celebration of Easter dates back many centuries—but where does the association come from?

1. The Folk Origins of Ostara
2. A Springtime Symbol

The Folk Origins of Ostara

Perhaps the most popular origin myth for the Easter Bunny concerns the Germanic Pagan goddess of spring, Ostara, to whom hares were supposedly sacred. One story states that Ostara rescued an injured bird by transforming it into a magical hare, and, in gratitude, the hare now marks the goddesses’s springtime festival by laying beautiful colored eggs—an ability carried over from its previous form. However, the provenance of Ostara’s legend has been widely questioned: “a goddess called Ostara isn’t known from ancient sources at all,” writes Stephen Winnick, a folklorist at the Library of Congress’s American Folklife Center. 

As it turns out, she is far from an ancient deity. Winnick traces the Ostara myth only as far back as 1835, when it was invented by renowned folklorist and linguist Jacob Grimm (one half of famous fairytale collecting duo, the Brothers Grimm). Grimm was inspired by the 8th-century writings of the Venerable Bede, which refer to an Anglo-Saxon goddess named Eostre whose festival was celebrated in the spring. He postulated that there must also be an equivalent German goddess and named her Ostara, arguing that the Christian Church had usurped her festival and retained its name.

The association between Ostara and hares wasn’t made until 1874, when the mythologist Adolf Holtzman suggested it as a way to explain the popularity of hare-related Easter traditions. “The existence of Ostara’s cult in Germany was a conjecture made by a folklorist,” summarizes Winnick, “but her connection to rabbits or hares was even more of an academic stretch.” Despite this, discourse connecting her to the Christian celebration of Easter, and to the tradition of the Easter Hare, became commonplace in 19th-century Europe and still persists today.  

A Springtime Symbol

While there is no suggestion of Ostara’s existence prior to Grimm’s claim, scholars do now believe Bede’s assertion that a goddess named Eostre was worshiped as a local deity in the south and east of Anglo-Saxon Britain. There is no strong evidence to indicate she was particularly associated with hares, though, but the animals were sacred to a number of other pre-Christian deities, including the Roman goddess Diana and Celtic goddess Andraste.

Hares were generally revered in the period: Numerous amulets featuring hares have been discovered, zooarchaeological evidence implies it was verboten to eat them, and there is also some evidence to suggest their use in fertility rituals. Indeed, it is in part the high fecundity of hares that associate them with spring. As Winnick points out, hares and rabbits are not merely symbolic of the season, but are actually present during it: “the connection is not merely one of cultural convention,” he writes, “but rather exists in nature independent of culture.” The same is true of rabbits, eggs, and flowers. As such it is reasonable to suggest that multiple cultures might independently elect to adopt these as seasonal emblems. 

The precise origins of the Easter Bunny are in all likelihood lost to the mists of time. What we can all agree, though, is that this candy-wielding hare makes for one fun—and delicious—holiday tradition.

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